


Rare Side Effects May Include the Following

by Maiafay



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Altered Mental States, Canon-Typical Violence, Disturbing Themes, Dubious Consent, F/M, M/M, Other, Plaga!Leon, Weird Plot Shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:56:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 44,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1487203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maiafay/pseuds/Maiafay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The laser failed. Leon must contend with a stowaway inside his mind, one with an insatiable hunger, bizarre powers, and a horrifying secret of what the Las Plagas really are, a secret that Albert Wesker wants for himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Double-edged Cure

**Author's Note:**

> I know many here have already read this weird tale on FFnet. I'll be posting here for archival purposes, but plan on finishing this soon :) Will be posting every week or so until all chapters are uploaded.

**Rare Side Effects May Include the Following:**

**-:-:-**

What a team they made. She cowered and he fought. Barrels and boxes became her new best friends, and his gentle commands became her lifelines. _Duck and cover your head, Ashley. Run over there, Ashley. Follow me, Ashley._ Obeying was an automatic gesture, her default. _Stay out of the way, Ashley. You're more trouble than you're worth, Ashley._ No, Leon never said it, but his eyes did. If it hadn't been for her, none of this would have happened.

She sighed. The island facility, laboratory, torture chamber, freak show—whatever name deemed appropriate—had been designed to get under the skin and fester there. It stank like a salad of sour fruit, moldy sneakers, blood, and decay. Cracking walls lined the dim hallways and dirty paint peeled from the ceiling. Fluorescent lights strobe-flashed, casting shadows from objects not really there. The steady drip of condensation nagged the silence and her nerves. She picked at the hem of her sweater and glanced down the long corridor. The rusted metal door stayed closed.

Her fingers shook. Maybe he had gotten smart and had left her there. She wouldn't have blamed him.

She bit her lip, but imagined her father's raised eyebrow and glare of disapproval. His voice invaded her head, a lazy drawl that somehow sounded mean and friendly at the same time. _Never show emotion. Keep your guard up. Even your friends can't be trusted. Arm's length, darling,_ Daddy whispered in her mind. _They can't hurt you if they can't get close._

Another glance down the hall. Another bout of shivering and fearful reassurances to herself. _Wait here_ , _Ashley, I'll be just a minute._ But his minute had become her hour. Maybe she should look for him - no, if he returned and found her missing, he'd think the worst. She had to be patient. Leon always came back. Always.

One of the overheads popped and she jumped with a little squeal. The parasite under her ribs twitched in dismay. Would it take her over now? According to the research files Leon had shown her, when the creature reached maturity it would transform her into a mindless slave. After that, all Saddler had to do was wind her up and send her toddling back to her father. Say bye bye to America, and hello to the pod people.

_Feel this intoxicating power. Don't you want it, little one?_

Saddler's voice cooed in her head and her plaga reacted. Pain bloomed around her middle, the sensation crawling into her lungs. Her throat twitched. She tightened her jaw, and held her breath, but warmth spattered her chin when a cough burst past her pressed lips. She grabbed the stone wall for support, doubled over with an agonized gasp. Her lips trembled as she tried not to cry. Her chest constricted. Her fists balled up. The parasite thrashed in her chest like a skewered fish.

Images popped unwanted in her head: alien creatures exploding from lungs, aliens eating the host from the inside out. There had been so much blood in those movies. So much screaming. Didn't seem fun anymore now that it was real. Fear doused her insides with icy water. Her vision blurred as she fought for air. The coughing increased. Tears ran down her face; she fell to her knees. Hazy disjointed thoughts buzzed—his face the only thing clear. She clung to his image. He would soon find her. He would protect her, keep her safe.

_Leon...hurry...please._

* * *

Leon Kennedy opened the rusty door as silently as possible—which meant an assortment of squeaks, groans and shrieking from the weathered hinges. He rolled his eyes and swallowed a groan. Sometimes he wished Murphy's Law wasn't so...lawful. One look down the dark hall and his jaw tightened. Where the hell did she run off to this time? He should seriously think about a leash.

He took a step, then a soft sob erupted from...somewhere. He raised his weapon, but didn't call out. The halls he just left had been swarming with ganado. He had killed fifteen and still, they kept coming. It was like an endless march of pissed-off ants. What if one had managed to get through and—

He stiffened as he heard the cry again, coughing along with it, but faint, around the corner somewhere. He stalked forward, gun drawn until he rounded the bend of the L-shaped hall and spotted his charge, alone, bent over in the shadows and heaving.

"Ashley!" He holstered his gun and rushed to her side. She sputtered and managed one look up before coughing an alarming amount of blood on the floor—and on him. God, was the plaga finally maturing? Was this the final attack before it took her over? He wrapped his arms around her shaking body and rocked with her with every spasm, with every breath she struggled to take. There was blood on the floor, on her hands. Guilt coiled in his stomach. Why didn't he save those pills Sera gave him? Ashley's parasite was further along than his; she had needed them more. Damn Salazar and his stupid rituals! Who knows what that little midget geezer did to her, or what Saddler might have—

Ashley exhaled in a quaking sigh and ceased coughing. She panted against him, her eyelids half-mast. Tears streaked her cheeks; her hair clung to her forehead in dirty blond clumps, and he had seen tanner skin on a corpse. Blood coated her lips, more had spattered on her sweater. He should wipe it away, or at least the red splotches on her face. He braced her with his arm and reached into his back pocket. Damn, nothing but a few pesetas and some empty gum wrappers. Ashley moaned and wiped at her mouth. "Gross," she said even though it sounded more like _goss._

"Can you stand?"

Ashley sniffed. "Yeah I think so." The sickly gleam to her skin lingered, but she seemed more alert. She clung to his arm for support and hobbled to her feet. "Thanks," she murmured against his shoulder. He ignored the red smear when she lifted her mouth.

"Are you okay?"

Ashley nodded and took a rattling breath that would have made a smoker wince. "Yes, I think the worst is over, for now anyway." She looked at him through wide, bloodshot eyes. Her expression of stupid hope made his heart lurch. "Did you find the laser?"

He nodded and motioned toward the door he had just came from. "I found the device, I think. It seems to be working. As for its safety?" he broke off and grimaced. Perhaps now might not be the right time to mention the risks in the report he had just read. The further along the plaga, the harder it was to kill; the harder it was to kill, the longer the patient had to endure the pain. Severe internal bleeding or burns could result—at worse, death. Better not mention that detail; the less she knew, the easier it would be to get her into that chair. "Not sure about that…the thing looks a bit, worn."

"But you found it?"

He clamped his mouth shut and began walking toward the door. Guilt simmered inside, but he cooled it with a deep breath. There was no other choice now. Either they became Saddler's pawns or they risked death to destroy the creatures inside them. If this didn't work...

Well, he would worry about that later.

He waved Ashley to follow. "Yes, it's this way, stay close."

* * *

The room where he had found the laser was large and caked in concrete as most of the facility. Slender florescent bulbs hummed like strained bumblebees, and hung lopsided from their supports. Computer monitors lined one wall and blinked like erratic Christmas lights. Cables ran thick and serpentine toward the middle of the room, where the main attraction, a metal chair complete with wrist restraints and guarded by two lasers, squatted like a prop straight out of a science fiction movie.

"This hunk of junk? Are you sure about this, Leon?" Ashley eyed the chair with distaste. Fear clouded her features, and seem to age her ten years. Poor kid. When this was over she would need some serious R and R.

"We have no choice," he said. "The plagas need to be destroyed—sooner rather than later." Ashley did the lip-biting thing and he forced a patient sigh. "I know the chair looks scary, but it will be okay, okay?"

"I'm not five years old." She crossed her arms, but her lip remained tucked under her teeth. Not five maybe, but not willing to jump in the chair either. Guess the Ladies First rule didn't apply.

"Ashley, I'll go. That way, if I survive, you'll know it's safe."

"That's your plan?" Her eyes actually bugged, and he had to fight to keep a straight face. "What if you die? Where does that leave me?" That whine began to creep in her voice. God, he hated that. He had coined this particular tone the 'Ashley Shrill' back at the church when he had first rescued her. It's a wonder Saddler never used a muzzle.

He gave her his biggest smile, then pointed to the console. "Yep, that's the plan. If it works, we got one less problem; if it doesn't, we'll both be out of our misery one way or the other." He dropped the cheerful act and met her eyes. "I'm sorry, but this is it, Ashley, the choices just ran out."

She stopped chewing her lip to shreds, but now looked ready to burst into tears. He braced himself for the rivers soon to flow, but they never came. To his surprise, Ashley blinked several times, inhaled a shaky breath and walked to the console. The control panel bathed her face in green light as she looked over the buttons. She bit her lip again and nodded. "Looks easy enough, I guess."

"Good. Now don't press anything until I get my butt into the chair."

"Kay." She kept her eyes on the screen. He could see her hands clench her sweater, wringing it. He better hurry before she lost her nerve.

He appraised the chair and his entire midsection did a loop-de-loop. Wrist restraints? Whoever built this thing had seen one too many horror movies. And why two lasers instead of one? Did they intend to miss the first time? He sighed and rubbed his forehead. Okay, now who did he have to coax himself into this chair? The fluttering in his stomach twisted into a cramp and he felt his plaga undulate with a burning jerk. He gasped. Quickest pep talk he ever had. Two lasers or one, whatever it took to kill it, whatever risks were involved, he would take the chance.

Once he seated himself under the lasers, he said he was ready. Ready as one can be anyway when searing lights would probably incinerate his vital organs along with the parasite, which wasn't very "ready" at all to be honest, but no point in saying that out loud. He was the hero after all, here to save the day, not fidget even if he now gripped the arm rests with cold, stiff hands. Fearless, yeah right.

Ashley hesitated. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

He cleared his throat. "Yeah," he said. She frowned at him, then hovered her finger over a button he couldn't see. His body tensed and he almost told her to stop. No, this had to be done. If it was his time to go, then—

"Here goes nothing," she said, her voice soft and unsure. He heard the hollow click as the button depressed.

Pure agony. The wrist restraints didn't seem so funny now. Without them, he would have bucked off the chair and curled into a screaming knot on the floor. The plaga launched itself into a series of furious contorting that made all previous cramps seem like love snuggles. Tears sprang to his eyes and the hoarse cry echoing through the room didn't sound like himself. Fire seethed in his torso, scoured his insides with bristles made from flame. The plaga thrashed, and he felt something else. Satisfaction. Good, let it burn alive. No more muscle spasms, blackouts, coughing up blood, forced obedience to Saddler—

He liked that last one best of all.

_The parasite hears its host's thoughts and shrieks in soundless fury. Its body is melting, oozing apart, becoming nothing. It refuses to become nothing. The source of its demise is burning light, it must escape, must hide deep inside, deep where the light can't find it. Its core is still strong, still intact. Through death, there is life. It will endure, it will adapt, it will swim through blood and flesh, burrow inside the host mind, find sanctuary in rooms unused, pathways untraveled._

_It will wait until the right moment, until its wounds heal, until the host is vulnerable._

_Then it will feed._

"All done!" He heard Ashley sing from a long tunnel filled with fog. That fog invaded his brain and messed with his motor functions. His limbs felt broken, heavy. His eyelids didn't want to open, but that was fine with him. His body felt hollowed out from the inside. It was hard to breathe, but the moan that crawled its way from his throat eased that a little, just a little bit. He raised his arm and grunted as it flopped back on the metal armrest.

"Leon?" Her hand grazed his forehead, but her fingers were too warm, almost burning. He moved his head away with a twitch, and that twitch developed a life of its own and continued down his body in a shuddering wave that had his teeth chattering and legs jerking as if pulled by puppet strings. He moaned again and braved a peek at the world. Everything spun in blurs and halos. Ashley better find a pan quick because he was going to be sick.

And aside from his other woes, there was a strange flexing sensation, like something twisting deep inside his head. His heart began to gallop in his chest, and in his current state that wasn't a good thing. The plaga wasn't dead! No, stay calm, of course it was. Ashley wouldn't say "all done" for no reason. She would have told him it wasn't dead. It was just a muscle spasm, it had to be.

He cracked his neck back and forth. The sensation went away. Weird.

"Leon?"

He squinted at Ashley. The lights were too bright. He blinked her into focus, enough to see her worried frown and her lip buried under her teeth again. He attempted a smile, but it never made it to his lips. "See, that wasn't so bad…" he said with a croak. How convincing he sounded.

Ashley sighed with relief and brushed the hair from his face. It was an affectionate gesture, one he wasn't comfortable with, but allowed because it would've been rude to lean away. "I was worried. I thought you were going to die." Her hand cupped his cheek. Even with his mind fuzzy, he knew if he didn't do something quick, she would do something else she might regret later, or something else that if Daddy ever found out about, Daddy would fire him on the spot.

He brushed her hand away and softened that action with a laugh. "Really, Ashley, I'm okay. Still in one piece, more or less. It's finally gone at least and that's the important thing." He heaved himself out of the chair and stood. His legs felt like soggy twigs and his back creaked. "Your turn," he said, and managed a wink. She pouted, and whether it was from his polite spurning or the fact she was next in line for Plaga Removal, he couldn't tell.

Ten minutes and some creative bribing later, Ashley stood and wiped her eyes. She smoothed her sweater over her skirt and adjusted her headband. He stared at her over the console, mystified. She was fine: no spasms, no groaning, no whining, no adverse affects other than the tears—which was something they both had experienced.

Maybe they carried different species of plaga. He knew of three varieties of the Las Plagas from those he'd eradicated from the village, castle and even here on the Island Base. But how many more were still out there? And what species had been inside him? Did it even matter now?

Ashley looked over at him and grinned. Despite his irritation, seeing her smile like that made everything better. Even made the pounding headache he still had worth it.

"That wasn't so bad. You made it seem hard." Her grin turned teasing.

He sighed and powered down the machine. He had made it seem hard? If she had felt what he felt—

_Something burrowing...twisting..._

Never mind, he'd sort it out later. Maybe when he got back to the States, he would contemplate these mysteries while sitting under a palm tree and sipping some nice strong tequila. Until then, he had a job to do. Take Ashley back to Daddy, save the world, and try not to die.

He felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. Secret government agents only, kids, don't try this at home.


	2. Halos and Maidens

If his forehead was cement, then the asshole drilling had no idea what he was doing. Leon rubbed his left temple and winced when light jabbed behind his eyes. If the remaining ganado had an inkling of self-preservation, they wouldn't wander into his sights. Bringing misery to the enemy helped ease his own, for a little while at least. And to add to his woes, the knife wound Ada had given him back in the cave stung from the sweat and dirt, and the muscle beneath wouldn't stop twitching.

"Leon?" Ashley's voice rang down the hall, not as a sweet bell, but as a crashing cymbal. For God's sake, he was right next to her! The intense urge to wring her neck made his fingers twitch. They weren't home-free yet. Saddler had his rotting lackey's searching every corner, every room for her. She was the shiny key they needed to unlock their room of destruction. They wouldn't let her just walk away; she was too important.  
 _  
Or, Mr. Scott, you can just give us the girl because you're not worth a penny, I'm afraid._

His lip curled when Salazar's voice grated in his mind. Not worth a penny, huh? Well, grandpa midget wasn't worth much either. Nothing left of him but a puddle of gore for Saddler to sift through and label in jars. Served the little freak right for what he'd done; for what he'd planned to do. His hands tightened into fists, and the sadist with the drill to his head made another pass. The lights above hummed and brightened. He squinted at one bulb hidden inside a cracked metal casing. Despite the dirt, it radiated cold and blue, the halo pulsing like his headache. Was this Saddler's secret plan? Replace the bulbs with super lights? Burn his retinas until he went blind?

"Leon, what's wrong? You haven't said a word since we left the laser room—"

"Quiet, you little idiot!" It wasn't the way he reacted that scared him, it was his emotion behind it. The boiling frustration that rose from nowhere and everywhere at once. "What part of 'shut the hell up' did you not understand? What part of 'they'll kill you if they find you' did you not get?"

"Geez, jerk." She stepped back, a perfect little frown of indignation crinkling her equally perfect golden brows. "What's with you?"

"I'm tired of your blond moments—keeping you alive is taking everything I've got. Just because you're plaga-free doesn't mean you can't be infected again. Didn't Daddy teach you common sense? Saddler's pets are still roaming these halls. I'd rather not run into another IT, or be chased by another Right Hand, Left Hand, Bare Foot, Runny Nose—or something worse. When I say to shut up, it's for a reason."

"Daddy wouldn't let you talk to me like this!"

"Oh, but Daddy isn't here is he?" he said. "Daddy's too busy milking all the national attention his baby girl is earning for him. Nothing quite eases diplomatic relations like a bunch of sappy condolences from a bunch of countries that didn't give a shit before. I bet he's sitting in the Oval Office right now, all wringing hands and glistening eyes, playing the distraught father while other people risk their necks to save what he should have had the balls to protect himself—"

He stopped and stared at her. What the hell? Did she just...glow? He squinted and looked again. No, nothing but Ashley with her hands on her hips, her hair sticking out in a frizzy loop from one side of her headband, and her face as red as a freshly smacked baby's ass. If it weren't for the cresting wave of rage inside, threatening to spill into something physical, he might have laughed. He might have told her he was just kidding, and that he hadn't meant what he'd said. He might have blamed the last twelve hours of no rest for his shitty mood, for his weak moment.

He might have said or done a lot of things, but then his world took a running leap into the Twilight Zone.

It was subtle, but the glow was there. A gold and blue mist rising from her arms, her head, her entire body. The breath whooshed out of his lungs in a loud gasp. Through the mist, Ashley went from angry, to bewildered, to frightened. She opened her mouth to speak and that moment stretched on forever.

Time seemed to slow, then twist, fold in on itself. The drill on his head hit his brains, and pain spiked from his temple to the back of his neck. The floor rushed to meet him. He caught himself before he gave it a big kiss, and thank God he had. Concrete stained by thousands of ganado shoes wouldn't have tasted so hot. Just the thought made him want to puke more than the headache.

"Leon!"

Funny, he could hear her, but her voice came from behind a cloud of buzzing insect wings. He was back in that chair again, unable to move, unable to speak. Words were bouncing pins inside his skull and each one made certain to hit with the sharp end up. Something slithered inside him, inside his head. An undulation, a sly worm inching along the ground. Slide and arch, slide and arch. Panic speared his stomach. No, no, the laser hadn't killed it. It had escaped, somehow, it had crawled into his brain.

"What's the matter? What's wrong?"

Her hand descended on his shoulder and he flinched. Too close. The buzzing became louder; the wings of wasps now. She pressed against him. Her mist trailed around his body, teasing with soft licks and the scent of vanilla and apples. How could a person smell that way? It wasn't normal. What he was feeling wasn't normal; what he was seeing wasn't normal. He shut his eyes, squeezed them tight. There, better, but not enough. He had to concentrate on breathing. Just breathe, just breathe. It was going to be okay. He just needed a moment, needed to clear his head, make it stop hurting.

Smells daunted him. The earthy scent of wet concrete, the dirt in the cracks of the walls, the sour tang of peeling paint, the burning wires of the lights overhead, the coarse fiber in Ashley's skirt, the cotton of her underwear, tinged with sweat and-

He cried out and curled into a ball, his head on the floor, his hands around his stomach. Someone had poured burning embers onto his lap. Need surged, wild, consuming. He hardened, his body responding in a way that frightened him. His flesh embraced the pain, the surging sensations. It felt wrong. Manipulative. The slinking feeling was back; it was moving again. He couldn't deny it: the plaga was still alive. But how? The lasers should have—

Something gurgled nearby.

His eyes popped open. All aches ceased like a candle snuffed out. His body quivered and his ears strained to hear the sound again. His awareness stretched beyond him, beyond Ashley who tugged on his arm and pleaded for him to answer her. It swooped down the hall, to the left, and then down a short ways, through the shadows and past blood-stained walls until it located the source.

Leon could see them in the dark: a Regenerator with its red eyes rolling like loose marbles and drool splattering its chest making the mottled skin there glisten in the faint light. The other, an Iron Maiden, stayed hidden in shadow, but its breath strained from its throat in a series of rasps that mimicked wheezing laughter.

The Maiden raised its head and sniffed the air. It began to move. Ah, hell.

"Ashley, Ashley we have to go, we should leave, gotta leave right now." The words came in a meaningless slur and he tried again. "It's coming down the hall, those maiden things, the spiky ones. We have to get going, I don't have enough ammo to kill it—I know I don't."

"A maiden? How do you know? Where is it?" She fluttered beside him, hands in her sweater, at her sides, fisting her skirt. The mist rose from her and contorted in different directions. He watched it, the threat fading from his mind, his eyes following the patterns as they darted about. The heat gathered again. He reached out, his fingers almost grazing the wisps of light—

Ashley swatted his hand. "Leon! What the heck?"

"I don't know, I don't think it's dead." He resisted the urge to sniff his hand where her fingers had brushed. That would scare her—hell, it scared him. "There's something wrong, Ashley, something's in my head. I think it's in my head."

"The plaga? The plaga's in your head?"

"Yeah, I can feel it. Moving around, slithering in there—"

"But we killed it!"

"No, no I don't think we did."

"Yes we did! The lasers killed it, the computer said it was—"

"The lasers didn't do shit!" He slammed his fist to the concrete and then stared at it. So did Ashley. His hand was an island amidst the cracks that zigzagged almost two feet from impact. No blood. No broken bones. Ashley's mouth dropped and her eyes grew round. He smelled her again, the moist valley between her thighs, the sour scent of sweat mingled with the musk of sex.

"Get away from me," he said.

She looked him, her eyes growing rounder. An owl with messy blond hair. "Leon—"

"I said, get away from me! Get away from me now!"

She flinched and lifted her hands from his shoulder, holding them up in a surrender gesture. The mist around her coalesced. Blue and gold; gold and blue twisting, gliding, shifting, and he really wanted to touch it. Just once. Sink his face into that energy and inhale it. Vanilla and apples, the scent came from there, from that glow—  
 _  
Kiss her then, kiss her, taste it for yourself._

That sounded like a good idea, and maybe that would help his pounding skull, the ache between his—

"Leon, your eyes!"

He blinked. Her words made no sense at all. Blue and gold; gold and blue. The colors spun faster. She was agitated, scared. Why? Everything seemed foggy. Dreamlike. Where were they again? The hall? There was danger coming, right? Something coming down the hall they should run from.

_Taste her, take what you need._

The words resonated in his head, cajoling, sweet; they nudged him into motion and ushered him forward, toward the solace who recoiled from him and said in her highest Ashley Shrill voice, "Stay away from me!"

That knocked him back into reality. What was he doing? What had made those thoughts in his head? They weren't his feelings, they belonged to someone–something–else. He swayed on his feet. The lights hurt his eyes again and his headache was back. His groin throbbed. He felt swollen there, heavy. "I don't understand what's happening," he said. "I can't control this, I'm seeing things. I see– "

Leon heard the danger he had forgotten, what he had been trying to get them away from. A rasping and shuffling noise came around the corner, no more than a few feet from where Ashely cringed against the wall—cringed from him, her bodyguard. There was no time for voices in his head or strange hungers. He had a mission, he had to protect her.

"Ashley, get away from the wall! Over here, now!" He hoped the command in his voice would override her fear. She met his eyes and seemed to search for something. Why wasn't she moving? Couldn't she see it lumbering toward her? The hall wasn't that dark. "Ashley, a maiden! Get behind me!"

That got her going. She took one look to her left, shrieked, then scrambled toward him. By then he was already moving forward, unsheathing his knife and pivoting into an attack stance. He never grabbed the Schofield nestled in his side holder—something told him the blade was the way to go. Odd choice, considering the bony protrusions dotting the creature's slug-gray body. With the spikes, its reach was at least three feet, maybe more; and this not including the adorable arm hug it enjoyed giving its playmates. So four feet, maybe five, spikes numbering at least forty to fifty. He didn't know how he knew the approximate number. He just did.

Drool slopped thick and yellowish from teeth far too big for its face. He could see its parasites without an infrared scope, the small leech-like creatures emanated a weak glow of sour green that mixed with the pus-colored mist of the Maiden itself. Just watching it bob around the creature turned his stomach.  
 _  
Spoiled life, not worth tasting, not worth a penny, I'm afraid._ He shook his head to shut that inner voice up, the voice not his - and yet - was his. He'd worry about it later. The later the better.

He darted a glance behind him. Ashley cowered against the wall with her hands buried in the folds of her plaid skirt. The material bunched around her knees, revealing the hint of upper thigh. A tremor ran through him, but he kept control. The mist around her whirled in tight circles and her face was pale as she chewed her lower lip. She looked so young; too young to be hunted like this, to be someone's prize, or something's chew toy. He nodded with reassurance he didn't quite feel and tried to smile. She wouldn't meet his gaze.  
 _  
Leon, your eyes!_

He swallowed. Kill the threat; sort the rest after.

The Maiden ambled forward and sniffed; every time it did this, its serrated cleft palate quivered and more drool oozed free. Whatever ugly stick Saddler used to smack this thing in existence must have been a doozy. Not even mommy could love that face. Was it trying to smell him? The mist around it looped in one direction only to change course and dart the other way. The feelings he gleaned from it were confusion, uncertainty, wariness. Yeah, he could relate.

Leon stood motionless. Sweat made the knife slick in his hands and he gripped it tighter. Every breath he took came slow and deep. He held his body taut. The pain had vanished at the Maiden's appearance, even the distracting pulse of his loins. Good thing—fighting fully aroused might wreck the equipment. There was no room for error. Impaled in the wrong place and he was dead; impaled in the right place and he was dead. Best he avoid impalement...period.

It stopped in the center of the hall. What was the matter now? He wanted to yell at it, make it hurry up and attack. More saliva spattered to the ground as it lifted its face. Smelling again. Joy. Did he smell funky or something? Was it his aftershave?  
 _  
Senses us._

He stiffened and let out a sharp breath. The knife shook. The Maiden cocked its head at him and let out a cry that made him think of cats growling and ornery babies.

_Beneath us, wasted thing, tainted flesh, serves no purpose, kill it._

The alien thoughts caressed his own like oiled fingers and it took every ounce of self-control not to plunge the knife into his head. Bad enough he could feel the plaga in there, worming its way through his brain, but now it was invading his thoughts? Speaking to him? He'd liked it better when it was under his ribs making him cough blood.  
 _  
Sunder its flesh, feed on the other, merge then as one._

The Maiden let out another eerie cry and lurched sideways. It sniffed so hard that its mouth closed with a snap and saliva droplets pelted him in the face. Disgusted as he was, he didn't have time to wipe it away. The Maiden leaped.

His knife swung in an wide arc. One of the arms groping for him met the blade and split in half. Fluid, blood, then regrowth, the tentacles flailing at him even as they repaired the Maiden's flesh. He needed to hit the plagas, but it was too close. He jerked back; the knife cut again and this time it cleaved the creature's torso. The spikes should have pierced him, but they never came. Why?

_Senses us. Kill._

Leon growled as that thought echoed inside his skull, and he dodged another arm-swipe from his opponent. The gun was looking pretty good right now, limited bullets or not. He reached for the holster with one hand and with the other, aimed the knife at the bobbing green mist upon the Maiden's chest. Its plagas had to go, or this fight would become one-sided, fast. The blade glinted as it whistled through the air. It never made contact. Mid-swing, the Maiden flopped its body to the floor and launched itself in his direction.

Ashley screamed his name; the knife went skittering and his head hit the concrete. The Maiden strained against him, but did not impale him. Maybe its spikes were broken. Gray specks spun before his eyes, cleared the next instant, and then his vision expanded. Every pore on the maiden's skin, every wrinkle, every oozing crack revealed itself in precise detail. Yum, what more could he ask for? Slobber dripped onto his neck, and one inch closer it could bite his nose off. He should be dead; a pin cushion. Why wasn't it using its spikes?

Leon bucked and the Maiden used its weight as an anchor. It smelled like blood and dirt filled with grubs and worms. He gagged and pushed at it. It refused to budge. One eye studied him, its pupil twitching amidst a sea of red. Then it dipped its head low, turned its face to the side and licked him from throat to cheek.

He punched it.

The Maiden reeled; strings of slobber flew, but it righted itself and opened its mouth wide. He punched it again, and this time aimed between its yellow teeth, straight for the upper palate. His hand hit mush, went through, and his fist wound up stuck in the Maiden's nasal cavity. Oh...nasty.

It yowled and thrashed as he pulled his fist back. For one moment - the longest one of his life - he thought those teeth would clamp shut, and bye bye hand, bye bye fingers. Lucky for him, the Maiden whipped its head back and his hand slipped free, goo-covered, but whole.

The Maiden rolled to the side. He rolled to the other. Once he regained his footing he yanked the Schofield free from the holster and began firing as soon as the Maiden righted itself. One green glow splattered, then another and another. The Maiden bloated and reached for him, arms extending. He dropped to his knees as the arms passed above, the breeze from the motion ruffling his hair. He shot again. Another glow extinguished. It shrieked and he shot out its leg. Five bullets, one left. On the floor, the Maiden wove snake-like toward him, tentacles sprouting from its missing limb. The last verdant glow flickered on its spine. He didn't even need the sight to line the final shot.

Its body ballooned, and the Maiden screamed in agony right before it burst. He dodged most of it, but blood and gristle got him anyway. Even Ashley cried out a horrified "Ew!" and swiped at her arms as if bees were attacking her. The gun slipped from his fingers. It was empty now. Leon dropped his eyes to the floor.

Not much remained of his enemy; its legs twitched, the nerves still trying to communicate signals to the flesh: move, run, kill, hurry. But it was too late. Its mist lingered a moment and then dissipated like vapor. What did he feel? Elation? Satisfaction? What feelings were his and what feelings belonged to...it?  
 _  
Matters not, threat is eliminated, feed._

He flinched and staggered forward. Like a flipped switch, the ache, the throbbing, the heaviness roared though him. His knees threatened to buckle, but somehow, he remained standing. Heat flared in his loins, and then spread throughout his body until his temples dripped with sweat and his cheeks felt scalded. He closed his eyes. The scent of blood filled the air, the scent of rank meat. But there was something else, something sweeter beneath, something that smelled like, apples. His body pulsed with his heartbeat; his breath came in spurts and his hands wandered over his hips. What was that saying again? Idle hands are the devil's—

The groan he made echoed down the hall. He collapsed to the floor.

"Leon?"

She circled him, her hands stiff and doll-like at her sides. Blood stained her orange tank sweater in large blotches, her legs and hair also. But those things didn't matter; what mattered was that mist. That blue and golden energy...It should be his; it should fill him, not her. She didn't deserve it, he needed it more.

No, those weren't his thoughts! It was the plaga, again. Somehow he had to keep it from taking him over. Why had he taken all those pills? He should have saved a few, maybe, maybe they would have—

"Leon, I think we should go back to the laser room, okay?" Ashley bit her lip, and he almost took her right there. He grappled for control and managed to win once more. It was probably the last time. The sensations were becoming unbearable. He peered at her through the fringe of his bangs and took a shaking breath.

"The lasers won't help. They weren't designed to kill brain plagas." So hard to talk without sounding like an idiot. "I mean, they can't handle what's in my head. I don't think what's happening is normal." That was an understatement. His skin felt too small for his body. Whoever made the zipper on his pants deserved a raise.

"You don't know that. We could look in the desks, find notes, find something that will help this."

"Ashley, nothing short of a lobotomy will help me. I got one round of ammunition for the Schofield, take it from my back pocket. Don't touch nothing else. The gun...the gun is over there—"

"No! I'm not taking your gun."

"Yes, you will. Take, take the gun off the floor and take the round from my pocket. I'll walk you through...the loading. Keep the hammer semi-cocked and—and when you shoot—"

"I'm not taking your damn gun!" She shook her head and wiped a tear that slipped free. "You're supposed to protect me! We can go to the lab—"

"We're not going to the lab! We're not doing anything! I'm staying here, on the floor, until I can get control of myself!"

"Then let me go to the lab." Her earnest expression made him cringe. "We did it in the castle, remember? We split up and I got all that stuff for you. It'll be okay. I can look for the notes and you can wait for me—"

"Take the fucking gun!"

"No!"

He was shaking by this point, every part that was rational, human, understood her frustration, her fear. But the stowaway in his mind saw her rising emotions as something to exploit. It would be so easy to throw her up against the wall, lift her skirt, press himself between her legs and—

"What's wrong with my eyes?" He stammered the question in the effort to distract himself. "You said something about my eyes earlier. What did you mean?"

She stared at the floor. Her cheeks looked redder than his felt. "Nothing, it was just the light."

Her mist twisted into a column of color that flared bright gold. The plaga inside him whispered. He smiled. "Liar."

"I'm not lying, it was nothing."

"Liar, liar, pants on fire."

She sniffled and backed away. "What? I don't understand."

"What's so hard to understand?"

"Stop it! Let's go to the lab, to the laser room, we'll find something-"

"Fuck the lab, fuck the laser room," he said and stood. The plaga purred within his mind and his body responded. Ashley bit her lip again, took another step back.

"I tried to give you my gun, Ashley," he said, his voice soft and low. "I wanted to give you something to use."

"Use?" She bumped into the wall.

"Against me."

She stopped, her lip trembling until she caught it with her teeth. "I wouldn't shoot you no matter what you did."

"No, of course not. Good girls don't shoot, don't hurt. They run. Are you going to run, Ashley?"

Her hand groped the side of the wall. She shook her head, her breathing quick and thready. Her mist spun in all directions. His groin tightened. The plaga shivered inside him, the feeling like silk to bare skin. "Because I think you're going to run, and if you're going to run, I'm going to run. And when I catch you, I'm going to hurt you."

She gasped, and her tears that had been gathering spilled down her dirty cheeks. Her mist stopped straying from her body and now hovered close. A shield to keep away the monsters. Too bad that shield wouldn't save her. He took a step forward.

"So, baby girl, what do you say to a thirty-second head start?"

With a panicked cry, her hands pushed off the wall and she fled into the darkness. He stood there for several moments and listened as her footfalls became distant; he watched the flicker of her life force - her aura as the plaga had called it - grow fainter and fainter the further she ran.

Thirty seconds passed.

He smiled.


	3. Forbidden Fruit

_The prey is near, why hesitate?_

Maybe the thirty or so ganado between him and his "prey". Fighting them would waste time—might give Ashley a chance to escape. He had pursued her into a laboratory, a wide room filled with discarded medical equipment and the remains of Los Plagas experiments. She hid inside an observation suite, a bulky tier that hung over the main area of the lab. A long window stretched along the top half, cracks snaking through over the surface from several bullet holes. Metal stairs descended from both sides of the suite, clogged with ganado shoving and snarling at each other.

Ashley had barricaded the doors with something, and that something had the cows swearing in Spanish and throwing their bodies against the steel. Already two had broken their collarbones, and as he watched, one male fell to the stained floor, the parasite erupting with an indignant squeal from his broken neck. Moronic creatures.  
 _  
Yes, they are nothing, motes of dust, empty of reason and thought. They will not hinder us._

The large overturned cabinet he knelt behind smelled like piss and rubbing alcohol. Yellow-stained towels spilled from one side and various surgical tools glittered under the dim lights. The cracked bulb above him had flickered its last weeks ago, and its neighbors seemed close behind. Bodies lay across the floor and on gurneys, some whole, some with limbs missing, all strewn about like broken dolls dropped from high above. Some retained their blood-spattered gowns, but most wore nothing.

The old version of himself, the one that had arrived in Pueblo with every intention of rescuing the maiden and going home a hero, would have been revolted at the loss of life. From the expressions on their faces, the yawning mouths and bulging eyes, these people had died in agony. Under the guidance of the Plaga, the creature who made his body ache with a hunger he didn't quite understand, he dismissed the violence and horror with a shrug. The Sovereign enjoyed making a mess and causing pain. Why should he muse upon it?

At the thought of Saddler, the Plaga coiled in his mind. _Sovereign. Trees who envy their leaves, we ride upon the wind and they hate us for it._

The smell and the flies fought for his attention: one a steady drone in the background that distracted, and the other crawled up his nose and made the hairs there shrink in fear. He could smell her over that, a puff of sweet breeze amidst sewage.  
 _  
Go to the female, I grow impatient._

He hesitated, then crept forward. He avoided the glass on the floor from the broken overheads, but not all. Some pieces crunched and popped under his shoes. The ganado kept beating the door, zealous birds pecking and pecking until they poked through. No one noticed him.

No matter how stealthy he tried to be, he would still have to climb on top of the ganado or shove past them to reach his goal. He searched the room for other alternatives. Despite the Plaga's reassurance, he'd rather not deal with the Sovereign's bloodthirsty flock.

_Stop, let them sense you._

He obeyed, but his old instincts rose from the murky waters the Plaga had submerged them. He had the sudden urge to grab his gun and start shooting. The Plaga slithered in his mind and the rebellious impulse dissolved. His body tensed and his gaze locked on the mass of bodies struggling against the observation doors. The Plaga cooed encouragement. _Wolves without teeth, snakes without poison, fear them not._

It didn't take long for the ganado to notice him. One male in an ugly black beret did a double-take and ceased jostling the others. This had a rippling effect over the crowd. One by one, they all turned to stare in his direction. Silence replaced the garbled Spanish. The whir of flies became deafening.

"You're in my way," he said. The ganado looked at one another, then at him, their eyes wide and their auras twitching in confusion.

_Perfection awes them, sharpen your tongue._

"I said, move!"

It took a moment to realize he spoke in Spanish. Fluent Spanish. The Plaga's influence faltered and the veil shrouding his mind thinned. He'd never studied the language, not even in high school. And the hurried google search of common phrases he had done before the mission didn't count. What was he doing? The room at the top had Ashley inside it, probably hiding under the desk or huddling in the corner. Terrified because he had chased her like a crazy—

He gasped and fell to his knees, the hunger a burning rope of thorns around his groin. To express its irritation, the Plaga burrowed deeper into his brain and jarred every nerve it passed. His limbs twitched; spasms bent his spine. He curled into a fetal position and thrashed in agony until the parasite seemed satisfied he had been punished enough.

_Get up_. Not words, but sensations of fury motivated him to his feet. The ganado shifted in a restless wave and watched him. They murmured among themselves when he raised his head to the observation suite. The color of his eyes must be the reason, but no time to worry about it now. The greedy thing in his head didn't give a shit anyway. "Get...out...of...my...fucking...way." Each word rattled in his throat like broken glass. He expected to taste blood in his mouth.  
 _  
Minutes are days...I hunger._

A strangled moan burst past his lips and he shuddered. The Plaga surrounded him on all sides, a puppeteer with plenty of string. No matter how many he broke, he couldn't escape it.

On the fringe of his vision, the ganado exchanged knowing looks at one another and nodded. They came single-file down the steps with the grace and formality of a funeral march—a far cry from the ill-mannered crowd they had been. Once they reached the bottom, they gathered to sides of the stairwell and awaited his approach as sycophants would a prince. That alone would have scared him into retreat, but the Plaga would have none of it.

_Go, take her, the pain will end when you do._

He started forward, surprised he could even walk. Their stillness unnerved him. He never had seen them so quiet, so composed. The Plaga squirmed, a sensation he felt all the way down to his tailbone. He grasped the railing of the stairs—and then the ganado wearing the beret tried to touch him.

This action ignited rage in the others. They yanked Beret back, their hands claws around his arm and in his hair. They shoved him to the side, their faces a collective mask of disgust and their green auras quivering in anger. The ganado's black beret slipped to the floor with a muffled clop.

"Está prohibido!" one ganado said, his voice more of a hiss than words. He glared at Beret with one good eye, the other dangled from its socket and stuck to his cheek. Leon looked away, his stomach fluttering in disgust. Beret shrank back and lowered his head.

Satisfied their rebuke had the intended effect, the others turned in a ripple of swiveling heads and upturned faces; a dreamy motion that seemed both forlorn and reverent. A few of them sighed, a wheeze of air that sounded like a dying man's last breath. Their eyes found him again, the weight of their gaze a heavy blanket he wanted to shrug off.

He forced his attention to the suite. There promised safety from not only from ganado worship, but the female—  
 _  
Ashley, her name is Ashley._

—would give him what he needed, what the Plaga needed. Maybe then it would leave him in peace.  
 _  
Yes, host. Satisfy me and suffer my influence no more._

_Liar liar, pants on fire._ But he couldn't deny what it promised. He couldn't fight it or reason with it; he couldn't bribe it into leaving him and going into someone else. Male or not, the overwhelming urge to fuck something—anything—made the ganado around him look pretty damn good. Too bad they didn't have enough of what the Plaga wanted—  
 _  
Their energy is offal to me, tainted lifeforce, feed on a proper wellspring._

He heard her crying inside the room, a muffled sniffle and choked sob that reminded him of Sherry so much he almost gained control and fled. The Plaga bristled and jerked the strings. It seeped into his thoughts like poison, whispering, coaxing, bringing out the worst in him.

Outside the door, he stood there hating himself, but eager to appease the ache. The ganado had wrestled the metal frame open a few inches, but the gray cabinet Ashley had shoved against it still barred the way. Through the narrow opening he saw a desk and a couple of broken chairs guarding the other exit. The tendrils of Ashley's aura teased the edge of his vision, but Ashley herself remained out of sight. He inhaled. The scent of apples beckoned from somewhere to his left.

His old self slipped away and the Plaga came forward, taking its place as the proverbial devil on his shoulder. He chuckled. Silly girl cornered herself good this time. Hadn't she learned anything from their venture through the castle and the island? Keep moving, don't stop, think ahead, remain aware of your surroundings. That's how you survive.

His hands clenched the side of the door. His fingers dug into the metal. Blood seeped around his nails, but he didn't feel pain. Pressure built in his arms, a hot itching force tingled in his fingertips. His breath hitched, his arms tensed, his body shifted to the side.

Then he shoved.

The cabinet toppled over, glass shattered. Ashley screamed. Her body flashed by in a blur of orange and plaid. Another solid hit with his shoulder and the door snapped off its hinges. It fell to its side with a raspy protest. The Sovereign had said something about intoxicating power hadn't he? The melodramatic cliché held some truth, at least. His entire body hummed with raw energy, but he needed more—the Plaga needed more.

He ducked a clipboard Ashley pitched at his head, and sidestepped a cup of broken pencils. Her aura flared in all directions before wrapping around her body so tight he could barely see the outline. She hesitated, then attempted to run past him. He shafted to the right, and then to the left when she tried the other way. Her lip trembled, her eyes sparkled with tears. Her gaze darted to the window. He watched the hope fade from her face as soon as the realization hit. They both knew the drop would cripple her if it didn't kill her. And if she survived, the ganado waited.

Leon stood silent and said nothing. That alone seem to frighten her. She pressed herself into the corner, a kitten all fur and teeth. He took a step toward her, excitement surging through him.

"Please go away!" Her voice trembled high and thin. "You're not Leon. Let him come back! I want him back!"

Come back? "Don't worry, baby girl," he said. "I'm right here. I won't hurt you—promise, cross my heart." She sank to the floor and buried her face in her hands. Her aura wisped away to nothing. His old self pressed against his awareness. This is wrong, what was he doing?

The Plaga intervened. _Stop toying with the female, feed._

Leon crossed the room in three, quick strides. He grasped her shoulders and yanked her to her feet. He expected—even anticipated—a flurry of punches and kicks, but she sagged in his arms, dead weight. He peered down at her. Her tears had stopped flowing, but she had the eyes of a battle-weary soldier. "Better you than them," she said and sighed. "I'm tired."

He hesitated long enough for his old self to whisper how crazy he was in his ear—then threw her against the wall. Everything afterward came in bursts of flurried motion.

He covered her with his body and his hardness throbbed between them. The sensation rocked a groan from his lips. His fingers slipped under her skirt, the cotton underwear she wore, soft and pliable in his hands. In one hard yank, he tore them off. She gasped, clutched his shoulders. The hunger went from a snarl to a howl. His palms cupped her ass, lifted her until her legs strangled his waist. All he wanted was the silk of her skin, the scent of her, the light of her aura invading him. She trembled, a captured bird in his hands. "Leon don't—"

He slid her skirt over her legs and fumbled for the clasp. His hips wouldn't stop moving, not even when he tugged her skirt free and tossed it to the floor. Her sweater and bra joined it soon after. Ashley panted in his ear, her hands now around his neck and her legs squeezed him closer. It became a struggle to breathe, to think. The Plaga seemed to spread in his mind, expanding itself with every buck of his hips. The desire to taste her overwhelmed all sense of morality. Wrong or right, he couldn't deny the instinct any longer.

He didn't just kiss her. When his lips crushed hers—cutting off her breath and her cry of alarm—he devoured her. Ashley ceased to exist. Flesh writhed beneath him; energy keened with pleasure. A soul opened to his mind, a pool full of light and wonder. He dove into it without hesitation. Her essence, a perfume that invaded him even as he conquered it, sang with colors he could smell and sound he could see. Somewhere beyond his awareness, his body jerked with a powerful orgasm. Ashley twitched under his weight, a feeble movement that might have been a last attempt to free herself. It didn't matter; she belonged to him.

Swathes of blue and gold converged around him, through him. He saw images in the mist, whispers that beckoned him closer.  
 _  
Keep your distance, you will regret..._

Another wave of sensation shocked the Plaga into silence. Not that he would have heeded the warning anyway. This new world enthralled him, to not explore it would be a waste.

The mist cleared, a window glimmered in the distance. Golden light spilled forth and a woman's voice sang faint and sweet.

_This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine—_

Laughter, a girl's delight at something he couldn't see. Curious, he touched the window pane. The singing became clearer, but he still couldn't detect the source. Lights blinked in the distance, fireflies of red and gold and blue. A shudder ran through him and another wave of pleasure blurred the mirage. He had to get closer before this—whatever this was—ended.  
 _  
Let it end now, go no closer._

He ignored the Plaga's warning. His hands pressed harder against the glass, and with a puff of warm, fragrant air, went through without resistance. The smoke dissipated. He stood inside a living room. Candles burned low upon the large oak bookshelf and on the table beside a red loveseat. Three stockings hung from brass hooks from the fireplace mantle. White fur trimmed the tops of red and green felt, and names etched in gold glitter shined from the center. The letters blurred when he looked at them.

Under a soft green blanket, a little girl snuggled in the lap of her mother. Both had the same delicate face and big round eyes. A Christmas tree twinkled in the corner, the source of the fireflies in the mist.

"Hide it under a bush, oh no, I'm going to let it shine..." The mother cupped her daughter's thumb with her palm and the girl giggled. He knew the child's name, it lingered like something sweet on the tip of his tongue. Ashley. She was Ashley.

They didn't notice him, a silent observer to their intimate moment. The girl began to sing along. Their voices rose together, weaving an invisible tapestry of love and comfort. Tears sprang in his eyes. There seemed something fleeting about this, a dusting of sadness that dulled the glow of the candles and chilled the warmth of the fire burning in the hearth.  
 _  
"Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine—"_

"Mommy died five days later. Daddy said something broke inside her head."

A sharp glance to his left and he found the little girl standing beside him. The other version of her rocked in her mother's lap, singing. The one next to him peered up, her face drawn and eyes haunted. Old eyes. He couldn't breathe. Somewhere in the distance, his body writhed with pleasure, but here, he trembled in fear.

"Come see the merry-go-round." She held her small hand out to him, glitter from the stockings sparkled on her fingers. He knew she had made those stockings that afternoon, the tiny frayed edges of felt still clung to her nightgown. When he didn't answer, her hand wrapped around his, her skin cool and burning at the same time. He gasped. Images flooded his mind, his eyes.

_Ashley laughs as she waves to her mother from a pink saddle on a painted white horse. She loves the color pink, every shade of it. She loves apples and Barbies and horses like any normal little girl. She watches Bugs Bunny with her dad and helps Porky Pig sound out the words. She wakes up early for Sunday school every week. Memorizing bible verses is fun, but the prizes are what she really loves._

_They go up to their cabin by Lake Michigan every summer, that's when Daddy says the weather is tolerable, and the water isn't so ice cold. Mommy likes to have picnics and brings a bottle of wine for her and daddy to share. They let her sip a little one time, but her tongue got all tingly and she spat it out. Daddy laughed and told her good girl._

_Mommy bakes pumpkin pies in the autumn, Daddy rakes the leaves real high so she can jump into them. Apple orchards are her favorite place to play, the hay in her hair, the sweet donut in her hand, and sugar on her face. That Halloween, the one before the end of her world, they carve pumpkins like Bugs Bunny characters and eat candy corn. Mommy sings to her every night before bed. This little light is mine is her favorite song. She never tires of it._

_December arrives and the stockings hang glittering over the fire. Daddy buys a new tree and they decorate it pink and white. Mommy tells her stories about Baby Jesus, Saint Nick and old Mr. Scrooge. Ashley can't wait for her presents, she even has a calender to count the days in chocolate._

_Then a week after Christmas, Mommy dies._

_Daddy doesn't speak for days. She doesn't stop crying. Her world becomes dark and empty. No more songs, no more light to brighten her way through life. She stumbles over holes she can't see and never seems to regain her balance again._

_Daddy isn't there, Daddy hardly comes home anymore. Politics and Republicans and Campaigning are his life now. Nannies come to take care of her—some nice, some not. She doesn't care anymore, doesn't go to church, doesn't watch Bugs Bunny, and doesn't visit the apple orchard. Ground keepers rake the autumn leaves into small neat piles. Picnics on Lake Michigan are faded memories._

_It's time to put away childish things, time for first kisses with boys she'll never love, time for etiquette, time for good grades and scholarships and being a role model for other little girls. Have to be a proper young lady, have to set an example because Daddy won the Race, he's the President of the United States. Strange how he can govern an entire country, but he can never meet her eyes._

_You look like her, he says. I can't bear it._

The most intense orgasm hit him then, jerked his body and his mind from the parade of Ashley's memories. He groaned into her mouth, but didn't pull away. Tears slipped down his cheeks. He clung to her, wrapped himself around her until he couldn't crush her any closer. Still energy left, the core of her, the golden swirl of her soul—

"Leon." In his mind, in that misty space of dreams and thought, young Ashley tugged on his hand. Startled, he looked down. He could see right through her, a ghost dressed in a pink nightgown and bunny slippers. The glowing aura around her flickered and disappeared.

She blinked her wide eyes at him. He noticed the dark circles beneath, the haggard lines around her mouth. "Leon," she said. "I'm dying."

He snatched his hand from hers and backed away. She followed, her lips trembling and her hands reaching for him. "You said you would protect me, remember? You said you would take me home. I want to go home."

He had said that when he first found her. He remembered the terror in her face when she shrank from him, the pleading in her voice. She thought he had come to kill her. What was he doing now?

The Plaga growled somewhere in the distance. _Feed, host, we need sustenance, need to complete—_

"I'm cold, Leon." Young Ashley hugged herself. She looked so small. "I'm scared, I can't feel me anymore."  
 _  
Keep her close, we can be one. Do not cease, do not—_

"NO!" He threw himself away, knocking aside chairs and putting as much space between he and Ashley as he could. Many hands steadied him, kept him from falling—

Ganado had entered the observation theater sometime after he kissed Ashley. They surrounded him now, all blank faces and red eyes. He recoiled, pressed himself against the wall. He had no idea how long they had been there, how long they had stood and watched as he took her life away.

He tore his eyes from them and found Ashley crumpled on the floor, naked. He didn't remember taking off her clothes. Her skin appeared translucent, a mimic of the ghostly little girl in his vision. A delicate webbing of blue veins shown under the thinnest areas. Her aura wisped over her skin, a pale glimmer of gold.

"Ashley?" His voice trembled like a scared little boy. He stumbled and shrugged away the hands that tried to keep him from the floor. Oh, now they wanted to touch him, now it wasn't forbidden.

He began a hesitant grope back to her on his hands and knees, realizing along the way the button and zipper on his pants hung wide open. He didn't want to think about what that meant. Her chest rose and fell in a wheezy exhale, but the rattle in her throat made him crawl faster.

When he reached her, his thigh muscles suddenly twitched and fluttered. Sensations of warm pleasure gathered in his groin. The throb began anew. The Plaga stirred in his mind with an angry twist.  
 _  
Complete what you began, host, I need more—_

"You need jack shit! Shut the hell up!" He slammed his fist into the floor, breaking the tile and sending it scattering across the room. "You made me hurt her! I'd promised to protect her! If she's dead, I failed my mission. And if I failed, then there's no point—no point to any of this!"

_We must feed, we must merge, the female is our—_

"No!" He gestured to the circle of masks around him. "Why can't I feed on them?" The ganado shuffled away from him, their vacant stares carrying the barest hint of alarm. They understood something had gone wrong; they knew the person who ordered them aside had vanished.  
 _  
I would sooner devour a rotting carcass._

"This is my body, my mind. If you want energy so damn bad I'm taking it from them."  
 _  
Fool, alcohol to slake thirst, sand to appease hunger—take them, then, see if they satisfy!_

He crouched, ready to spring. Ashley moaned and the Plaga moved in response. No, he wouldn't give in this time. He had cut the strings. He controlled this thirst. It didn't matter what the Plaga said, he would rather devour his enemy than take from the innocent.

"Sorry boys," he said through clenched teeth. "Mr. Plaga ain't driving anymore."

The first ganado he grabbed, whether by fate or coincidence, was Beret. He threw the ganado against the wall and pinned him with his body. The other didn't struggle, didn't move to defend himself, not even when Leon slammed his mouth over his.

For a moment, bliss. The feel of the ganado stiffening beneath him, the coolness of the other's skin easing his fever. He burrowed into those swathes of green and yellow. Memories flashed in the mists, but vanished before he could get close. Flickers of thought skirted the edge of his awareness, echoes of sound teased his ears. Energy suffused him but he felt nothing. Frustrated, he dove deeper, swam further. The soul, where was it? It had to be here, somewhere. Then he saw it, a tiny spark of yellow-white light nestled within the nest of moss-colored smoke. He gathered it in his arms and inhaled—

Then spat it back out.

He sputtered and released his victim. The ganado sank to the floor, dazed. Leon wiped his mouth and tried not to gag. Disgusting. How could something so bright taste like shit?

_Yes, I know nothing, heed me not, stubborn one._

"Oh fuck you." Leon yanked Beret to his feet and tried again. Same result. Raw sewage would taste better than this. An angry cry burst from lips. The ganado went limp in his arms and his eyes rolled back. He tried again. His fingers tightened in the ganado's hair as if bringing him closer would yield better results. But like the first time and the time after, no life force, no energy. Nothing but poison and fumes.

He snapped the ganado's neck in one infuriated motion and tossed him to the floor. He tore his knife from its sheath. The others were already moving by then, making their escape through the doors and down the stairs. Self-preservation had broke whatever the spell the Plaga had cast earlier. Too late. They weren't fast enough.

He killed them all.

The last ganado fell without a sound, blood spilling from his slit throat and pooling around his head. Beside it, Leon waited for the parasite to emerge, but the ganado's skull remained intact. The vile swirl of the creature's aura wisped to nothing. All done. All dead. His hands trembled, the blood dripped from the knife in a steady rhythm. The song of flies rose. They would be busy for a while.

"Leon?" Ashley's quiet voice warbled from the top of the stairs.

He closed his eyes. The relief made his knees weak. She lived, she was okay. The room seemed smaller then. His throat went tight, it became hard to breathe. He couldn't look at her because there was blood on his face. He felt it drying there, on his hands, on the knife, on his clothes. His comfort to her came in silence and the dead ganado on the floor. He had kept her safe from them, from himself.

"Leon look at me."

_Leon, I'm dying..._

He turned, and with some difficulty, met her eyes. Her gaze locked with his. Tears and weariness, but the blame he'd expected—even wanted—was absent. He drew a shaky breath and dropped his head. He wiped the knife on his pants before slipping it back in its sheath.

"Did you kill them for me?"

"Yes."

She shifted on the stairs and he braved another peek at her. She had put her clothes back on, but her skirt hung lopsided on her hips and her sweater faced the wrong way. Her bare toes folded over the lip of the step, her boots dangled from her hand. He waited for the Plaga to demand he feed, but the leech in his head kept quiet for once.

"I don't understand what happened," Ashley said. "I woke up...and I was naked. Did we...did we—"

"I don't know." Shame flooded him and he turned away from her. "I can't remember much, Ashley. I'm trying to sort it out. I'm...I'm so sorry. I—"

"I saw you there. In my living room. You watched my mother—" She sniffled. "I have that song in my head now. She keeps singing it." Her voice thickened with tears. "I miss her, Leon."

He stood frozen as she cried. What a bastard he was. He should go over there, put his arm around her, provide some semblance of comfort. He had peered into her mind, her memories, violated her most private thoughts. What right did he have?

_Keep your distance, you will regret..._

If he had entered Ashley's memories, had she viewed his? He glared at the ganado on the floor, not seeing it, but pondering that thought of Ashley witnessing the most personal moments of his life. His childhood, Raccoon, South America, even the events when he arrived in Pueblo could have flashed before her eyes.

He chewed on his lower lip, then stopped. That habit didn't belong to him. Young Ashley shimmered before his eyes a moment, her face sad. _Come see the merry-go-round. Picnics in the summer, swimming, sand castles, mommy and daddy laughing on the blanket and sipping wine—_

The blood under the ganado's head oozed around his boots. He moved back, his stomach rolling. Ashley's memories wandered inside his skull like lost children.  
 _  
There is another alternative to the female._ The plaga's voice in his mind came as a polite, almost haughty nudge. He paused, grateful for the distraction. Ashley buried her head in her hands.

_Go on._

_The Sovereign idles somewhere near, his energy an ocean to sup. You wish for his demise, yes?_   
_  
Yes, but didn't you say to keep away from him?_

_Yield to my influence, host, the Sovereign will fall._

_No, I won't compromise myself again. If you let me do the talking, we have a deal._

Silence, then it flexed inside his head. Damn, he hated that.  
 _  
Defiance brings chaos, if the Sovereign discovers our true nature, death will not grant escape._

_Fine, whatever. Just don't try anything—_

"It's talking to you, isn't it?" Ashley wiped her tears away and studied him with curiosity. "What's it saying?"

"Nothing important," he said. "Are you strong enough to walk? We need to get topside and figure a way off this rock. If I can figure out how the Sover—Saddler's hijacking my signal, we can call for help. Running around here wasting bullets isn't doing squat."

"But you killed all the ganado with your knife."

"I know that!" He winced at his tone and tried again. "I know, okay? I'd rather save the bullets for something worth...shooting. The ganado really aren't an issue anymore."

"Because they think you're one of them, right?"

Perceptive little girl. He inhaled and released his breath slow. "It's complicated and I'll wonder about it later. We need to concentrate on getting—"

"I keep seeing your memories," she said. Her eyes softened and her aura lapped her skin in faint ripples. The door looked pretty good right now; maybe if he started toward it she would shut up. "It felt like walking through a dream, everything all misty and hard to see. You crashed your dirt bike when you were twelve, almost broke your neck. Your dad was so mad...and scared. Grounded you for months. Your first kiss was with a redhead named Sarah, she said she would punch you if you didn't kiss her good. Your sister used to make up stories about the woods behind your house. Buried treasure and secret places you would try to find on your own. You and her would go hunting monsters with sticks and plastic swords. You hate her husband now, he doesn't treat her—"

"Ashley. No."

"But I saw everything! I saw you in that city, in Raccoon. Zombies and those licker creatures all over the place! And that Asian woman, Ada, she betrayed—"

"Stop it! I know what you saw—I lived it, remember? We'll have our share time later when I don't have to worry about Saddler and his cronies carrying you off."

She bunched her skirt up in her fist, her bared thigh drawing his gaze. He bit his lip to keep his thoughts and body calm. This lip biting thing better not be permanent. "You promise?"

"Yes, cross my heart—" He stopped, let out a restrained sigh. "I mean, we need to leave, we can't risk more ganado discovering us."

She stared at him for so long he had trouble holding her gaze. He had no intention of discussing what happened between them. He didn't have the luxury of feeling sorry for himself. _Push it away, tuck it down deep._

His mission would end once he got Ashley to safety. After that, his fate depended on whether the doctors could remove the Plaga from his brain. If they couldn't, then what? Would they kill him, study him? Dissect him? His imagination began dredging images of his organs in neatly labeled jars. Perhaps he should consider killing himself before things got that far.

This mission had seemed doomed from the start. Even before the police car had driven off the cliff and his escorts murdered, there had been a nagging doubt in the back of his mind, a sliver of unease he couldn't pin down. Rescue the girl, bring her home, be the hero, what could go wrong? His instincts had told him to beware, and he ignored them.

_Fate,_ the Plaga said. _A length of thread woven, the knot upon its end cannot be undone._

_Shut up._

"Let me get my boots on." Ashley said. The smell of death lingered like moldering meat. The ganado on the floor accused him with sightless eyes. He shifted his feet and waited as Ashley composed herself and righted her clothing. Her aura looked brighter to him, or maybe his wishful thinking made it seem so. Hard to believe she had been lying on the floor near death fifteen minutes ago.

"You ready yet?"

"Ready." She came down the stairs, slowing her pace as she reached the bottom step. She hesitated, her aura flared in fear.

"Look, just stay close, but not too close, okay? I have control of it for now. I'm—" He paused. "I won't let it overwhelm me again. Promise."

Ashley gave him a half-hearted smile, but her aura shrank from him. Not the reaction he'd hoped for, but it was better than nothing. He should be thankful she even agreed to let him help her. If their roles had been reversed, he wouldn't have been so trusting.

_The female is fond of you, host._  
  
 _Didn't I say to shut up?_

Outside the lab door, he searched for the fumes of ganado auras, and listened for movement. Satisfied no one waited outside, he opened it. The earthy scent of rock and dirt chased away the smell of decay. He breathed deep, relishing the fresh air. His body throbbed in hunger, but he bore it for the time being.

The list in his mind revised itself: eat Saddler, save the girl, save the world, and somehow save himself. And here he thought Raccoon City had been the worst of experience of his life.

Nowhere close.


	4. The Masks We Wear

_Keep the sun at your back, hide our true nature._

Leon didn't understand what the plaga had meant at first, but upon stepping onto the platform, the chilly wind whipping at his hair and the rusty glow of the sun dipping below the horizon, he admitted its wisdom. His eyes would be the first thing Saddler saw, and his eyes gave him away as the mint iridescent wings did the luna moth.

After the debacle in the lab, every area he had entered barred his and Ashley's escape one way or another—whether it be dead-ends, rogue maidens, or patrols of ganado. He felt like a rat pawing at the side of a glass cage. What had happened with the ganado haunted him, and the blood caked under his fingernails served as a reminder of how much he had changed in the last few hours.

The plaga scoffed at his discomfort. _You will gather them in force, sever their binds, make them yours, such power is our birthright._

Birthright? Thanks, but no thanks.

Tired of running in circles, he sought higher ground. Ashley stayed below at his request, and not a word of protest had passed Ms. Graham's lips—a remarkable occasion in itself—but he didn't celebrate. He knew why, and he knew some time apart would benefit his conscience and her peace of mind. Twice he had caught himself biting his lip, and each time little Ashley's voice whispered in his head. God help him if he was stuck with her mannerisms and sunny days picnicking with mommy and daddy.

_Enough with your bemoaning, it wearies me._

He rolled his eyes and grunted. He hadn't seen Ada since their last meeting. The love poke she had given him back in the caves hadn't throbbed in a while, and when he last checked, blood crusted his pants—but the wound itself had closed. The slash across his cheek from Krauser's blade also had disappeared. So much for battle scars.

The lift clanked behind him as it settled, but another sound creaked over the sigh of the nearby windmills. He tightened his jaw and pulled the Schofield from its holster. Its cold weight put him at ease. His surroundings, on the other hand, made him wish Saddler chose a daisy-filled meadow to build his research facility.

High steel pylons, cables, cranes, and construction equipment formed a maze of dark gray that made him feel dirty just by looking at it. The tread plating had seen better days, the rusted metal and missing sections meant he'd have to watch his step. Behind the crisscross of metal framework, peeked cliffs and rock—and beyond the twin catwalks that bridged the smaller part of the platform to the larger area—an ocean shimmered in the dying light.

And in the middle of it all, tied and unconscious and dangling from a crane like a pretty red carrot, was Ada.

The wind nudged her in a lazy pendulum swing and the rope complained with a familiar squeak. The steady throb of her aura told him she was unharmed, but that wouldn't last long.

The obvious trap jacked his already heightened senses past red alert. The shadows around him came alive, the darkness shifting to gray—every sound, every movement zinged across his brain in hyper clarity.

_He comes._

A low chuckle grated from the left side of the skeleton buildings where darkness had gathered the thickest. Leon pivoted, raised his gun and hoped he could get one clean shot at Saddler's mouth before the bastard could utter that nauseating "I'm better than you" laugh again. What a relief it would be to finally shut him up. His finger tightened on the trigger.

_Do not engage! Distract him, addle him, wait until we are ready._

_I'm not going to kill him, I'm just gonna maim him a little. I know we need his energy—_

_Strike when I command, not before._

_Watch the tone_ — _no one commands me to do shit. Got it?_

_Then keep your distance, your control. My...suggestions...are only for safety...our safety._

Yeah right, he wasn't stupid. The plaga wanted the driver's seat, but he'd have to be dead or dying before he'd give it up again. And just as he thought that, the itch returned. The pinching sensation traveled up his spine and across his shoulders. Ants on a mission. He shrugged it away, and it punished him by adding flames along with the pinching: fire ants on a mission. _Knock it off!_ _I need to concentrate!_

When the priest glided into view clad in his regal violet robes, that absurd golden clasp thing around his neck (it gave a whole new meaning to the word bling), and a gloating smile plastered on his face, Leon almost shot him on reflex. His breath caught, his hands clenched around the gun in a slick, sweaty vice. A miracle the damn thing didn't go off.

_Restraint, host! Restraint!_

_Restraint would be if I shot him in the face without hesitation. You're lucky, my little leech pal that I'm being such a good sport about all this. And what did I say about the itching?  
_

_Round metal darts irritate, not destroy. Stir his ire, diminish precious time._

Ada moaned and his eyes went to her. She met his gaze, her aura flitting in all directions. Scared for once. Hard to believe after all she went through in Raccoon—after all they went through. Did she bury past horrors under missions and adventure, or did nightmares seep into her dreams at night? He might ask her after this was over, if she didn't do one of her vanishing acts again and leave him alone, confused and wishing he had never cared for her in the first place. Women like Ada, high maintenance for a guy like him. At least, that's what he told himself.

Blood in the water, but no sharks swam in it—snakes did instead. Saddler's aura billowed everywhere, an ocean of blood fire that bled to black around Saddler's body. Serpentine coils writhed from behind him like a vision of hell. So much energy, he wouldn't even make a dent—

_NO!_

_Fuck! Will you stop distracting me? If anyone's going to mess this up, it's you!_

Saddler spoke, his voice coated in heavy cream. _"_ Ah, Mr. Kennedy, so good to see you. Did you tire of scuttling below and come up for air?"

Maybe if he focused on the Saddler's forehead—on that nice patch of wrinkles over his eyebrows - he could cure his wandering eye. "Needed to stretch my legs a bit," he said. "You don't mind, right?"

"Oh, not at all, stroll about at your leisure, though, I must insist we have a small chat first." Saddler's mouth quirked and his palm lifted.

This time, the rush of power didn't force him to his knees, didn't crush his chest, or make the plaga squirm in agony. From Saddler's outstretched palm, the energy flowed over his body in balmy wave. The wave spread, collecting in his nether regions and along his spine where the bizarre itch seemed strongest.

_Ah yes, a prelude of what we will devour. How pleasing._

How nasty. His kneecaps floated in his legs, but he held his ground—even managed to yank his knife from its sheath. The power flow recoiled, and Saddler frowned as if the wind up key had broken on his favorite toy soldier.

"Sorry, old man," he said with a grin. "My plaga took a long, long, overdue trip to wormy heaven—Ashley's, too. Your little palm trick won't work anymore, so how now, brown cow?"

Without thinking or even aiming, he whipped the knife at the rope binding Ada. The section above her head snapped and she landed with a quiet "oomph" on the tarp below. She looked at him and rubbed her wrists, her aura swaying with thanks.

"You okay?"

"I've been better," she said.

He nodded, his eyes on Saddler as the priest circled to the right. The tentacled staff he carried waggled at him with fury. Both he and the plaga felt a twang of satisfaction. Good, served the bastard right having all his precious plans blow up in his face. "Then get to safety. Me and grandpa here are going to finish our man chat."

"Leon—"

"It's okay. I got this. Ashley's below. Keep her safe until I get back." Ada's aura didn't like what he said, but she gave a firm nod. The black scarf at her throat fluttered when she slipped between the tall piles of equipment and he heard the whine of the lift a moment later. Saddler remained where he was, his aura making slow swirls of disinterest.

"The American hero, how cliché. You've won nothing, you are nothing."

"Well, this so-called nothing just ruined your evil plans and saved the day. What do you say to that?"

"You save tatters and dust," Saddler said. "The girl is only the beginning; soon the tower of lies your government has built will topple to the earth. And after it falls I will crush the broken pieces beneath my feet and gouge out the eyes of your leaders." Out of Saddler's vast aura, one blood-stained snake emerged and darted its head this way and that. It coiled and unwound with a lazy twist. He couldn't help but watch it, watch as it moved in a sensual dance where every graceful dip and sway tugged at his groin and nudged his breathing faster.

"Why do you stare so?" Saddler canted his head and furrowed his brow. In his aura, the same snake Leon had been watching turned and regarded him with suspicion.

He swallowed, but the pause turned his witty reply into an awkward fumble. "Because...smiling and nodding take effort."

Saddler's smile bent thin and crooked. More snakes stopped their hypnotic ballet and peered at Leon as if noticing him for the first time. "Such wit." Saddler sounded contemplative, as if musing what he would eat for lunch. "Instead of my guardsman, I should make you my jester. Bells and foolishness suit you."

_Careful, he suspects._

_How? All I did was look at him funny, he should be used to that—_

_No, see his aura._

Pulled by invisible strings, Saddler's legion of blood snakes began drawing tighter and tighter to his robed body. The colors dimmed, the dance slowed to a sluggish waltz. The edges containing the serpents began fading, the thick swathes of energy drawing away like the tide returning to the ocean.

Saddler's voice was a spool of silk. "So you used the laser treatment, yes?"

"Guess I won't bother answering that question since you already answered yourself."

"You attempted to destroy it—" The snakes wrapped around Saddler as if they meant to squeeze the life from his body. Leon wished they would and so he could save his bullets.

"What part of 'I killed it' don't you comprehend?"

Saddler's fingers curled around his staff. "Then why do I still sense kindred?"

The line of ants marched up and down, up and down. He tried to ignore the tremble in the finger cramped around the trigger. "Maybe because you're getting senile; maybe because you're mis-sensing—maybe because you're really really desperate for a new bodyguard. Or maybe because you're just plain deluded. I. Killed. It. Got it?"

Saddler stroked his chin, considering him. From the black ocean, the nest of blood snakes hissed. Not a good sign. Another round of palm attacks could give away the plaga. And speaking of the tiny monster in his head, it had been too quiet during this conversation; it should have interrupted at some point with its weird metaphors, and should have given "suggestions" on how to behave. He gave it a mental poke, but it shooed him away as if he were some bothersome child. Ants bit with their super-heated pincers into his shoulders, and he winced.

Another pause lengthened, now crossing the border of awkward into the territory of damn uncomfortable. Saddler's gaze kept roaming his body as if he would spy something incriminating, some hidden clue that would reveal his secret.

"Don't make me repeat myself, old man," Leon said, his voice low and even. "Consider your plans for invading America on a permanent hiatus."

"How confident you sound. Ever since we've met, I've admired that about you." The ocean became a shallow pool. What was left of Saddler's aura clung to him in a thin, crimson layer. One snake wavered for a moment, then wisped out like a blown candle. He tried to keep the alarm out of his face, but he knew Saddler noticed a reaction when there shouldn't have been one at all.

The staff stopped in mid-squirm. Saddler's yellow eyes narrowed to slits. Leon held his breath. The sun, oblivious to the drama below, shuffled ever closer to its westerly bed. Dark clouds approached, dulling the orange haze to a salmon pink.

In his mind, he pelted the plaga's window with imaginary pebbles. _Hey worm, pay attention! I need your help. Saddler's—_

 _Yes, yes, a moment more,_ its distracted answer came. _Almost finished._

"Come closer, I want to see your eyes." Each word dropped like a stone. Leon moved back. The itching became so fierce his eyes watered. On the bright side, that helped hide the color, but having to explain why tears ran down his face would be a conversation he'd rather not have right now. He blinked them away and adjusted his stance.

"We all want things," he said. "I want a thick, greasy cheeseburger right now, but I gotta go without don't I?"

"You use impudence as a shield, but I am not fooled." Saddler set his staff on the ground. It thrashed a moment, then flopped over and made a wandering journey to a nearby pile of steel beams. The priest took a careful step forward as if approaching a skittish dog. Leon didn't blame him—he felt like a skittish dog—one that might bite if the hand came too near. "Something went wrong during the treatment, yes? Something you hadn't anticipated? Describe what happened and I can give answers—"

 _The Sovereign lies, his words are silk, his tongue a blade, keep your distance._ The plaga's voice hummed in and out like a insect zipping by his ear. Then it hurried back to its ant army and issued new orders: full-scale assault. The incessant biting, stinging, gnawing made him want to scream. If the ocean-side of the platform had been less cluttered with pylons and junk, he would have thrown himself over the edge.

"Are we pals now? Best buds?" His laughter sounded as if he had a few screws loose—probably all of them. "You have no idea what happened and don't pretend you care. You're incapable of emotions that complex."

"And humans are paragons of compassion? I think not."

He raised the gun and he didn't give a rat's ass how bad it was shaking. "Parasites just take take take, and then take some more. And now it's my world. You're no better than us, you're worse."

"What are humans but screaming grasping children? If it shines or glitters, you lust for it. The earth crumbles beneath your feet, the world burns from your touch—"

"Show me the difference! You've destroyed this village, its people—"

"We live in harmony with our environment—"

"Bullshit!" In his mind, images came, little faces and shallow graves. "Where are the children of the village? Where? Oh that's right—dead. Go on, priest, preach your message of harmony and love."

"What has your world endured since your creation?" Saddler raised his arms to the heavens as if they nodded down in agreement. "Suffering, war, pestilence, and all caused by the vainglorious ambitions of humanity. You are the true plague here, not us."

"This is our world, if we want to fuck it up that's our right!"

"In this universe, planets with life are rare jewels, precious beyond words. Humans are the dominate species no longer. You have failed as caretakers and my people will supplant you. Americans, all that decadence and power—"

"All this bitching about Americans and for what? What the hell did we do to you?"

"You Americans abuse your wealth, privilege, and freedom; you care for nothing but yourselves."

"Give me a break! You _Sovereign_ are in no position to pass judgment—"

Saddler straightened, his voice soft. "Thank you, Mr. Kennedy. I had to be certain."

_Fool! That word is theirs, only plaga know plaga._

A moist THUNK sound and he lurched forward. The Schofield dropped from his suddenly numb fingers. Immense pressure crushed the breath from his lungs. Pain yawned from the center of his chest, and that yawn expanded to swallow his entire body. Hot blood gushed up his throat, filled his mouth with the taste of sour metal, and poured over his chin. He sputtered, and with a drunken loll of his head, looked down. He would have laughed at the irony if his lungs weren't a ruined mess. The tentacle Saddler had used to kill Luis Sera protruded from his chest. Same talon, same entry point. The tip of it glistened red in the waning light, a bony third arm that curved toward his face as Saddler shoved it deeper and higher. He scrambled for purchase on the fading edge of his consciousness.

_Endure this, we are almost ready, almost complete._

He couldn't form a coherent thought in reply. His lower body became an unbearable weight, and then to add to his torment, the ant army along his spine melted into rivers of lava that surged over his skin and below it, converging at the base of his neck and shoulder blades. He pawed at the tentacle, his hands slipping in blood and viscid fluid.

The worst were Saddler's eyes. He flailed like a hooked fish and Saddler watched him with an expression that wavered between awe and rapture. "Forgive my crude methods," he said, his voice breathy as if addressing a lover. "But I know you will heal. Already, I can feel your flesh knitting around mine. Such an intimate thing, yes?"

Saddler's aura roared to life, a sea of frothy black waves that Leon craved more than the organic blade out of his chest. Whatever energy he had gleaned from Ashley had whittled away long before he set foot on the platform. And if Saddler decided to let him live, the gaping hole in his chest would require even more energy to heal. If he could just call the aura, draw it to him somehow, he could feed and heal and gain the advantage again.

As his body descended and glided forward, those light snakes became his only focus, his only desire. All other pains dulled, became meaningless twinges. The priest's aura teased his senses; energy flowed and stroked inside him, a warm salty spray buffed his face. He groaned, struggling to free himself and dive headfirst into those red-black waters.

_I implore, do not yield._

His spine seemed to twist, fold in on itself. His hunger recoiled, then surged back in defiance. His body fought a war on two fronts, the invader within his mind and the invader embedded in his chest. Both sides pushed his will to the brink and frayed his sanity to the point he worried he would never have a normal thought again.

"I feared I had seen the last of those eyes." Saddler caressed the side of Leon's face with one finger. The touch sent shivers through him; the hunger stalked back and forth, batting at the flames licking his spine in irritation. "I've waited so long, endured so much. Our lost brethren have returned, our Indigo."

Another round of fire darts arched over his shoulders and curved along the back of his skull. The grand finale of misery—and then nothing. The hunger crouched, hesitating. Relief flooded him; he sagged in Saddler's grip.

With a sickening slurp, the tentacle pulled free and slid back under Saddler's robes. Warmth suffused his chest, and as the bones reformed and skin mended, and he had a brief wisp of a thought: where did that tentacle come from, exactly? Saddler only had so many places he could store such a large...thing. The beast inside him whined for attention and that sound made it past his throat and into the air before he could stop it.

Saddler ran his thumb over Leon's lips, cleaning them of blood and saliva. "Poor, poor, chico, so much energy wasted. Here, let me slake your thirst."

 _Host,_ the plaga interrupted in a breathless rush. Guess poking him with needles must be hard work. _The weapons I have created are beyond your abilities. I beg your acquiescence, allow me control, allow me this last conscious act. Let me destroy him!_

Oh, now it wanted to help. He recalled when he had vowed he would be dead or dying before he would allow the plaga to control him again. The worm didn't say it out loud, but he knew this was its way of punishing him, of reminding him who really wore the pants in their relationship.

Leon sighed in surrender as Saddler's mouth closed over his. _Do it._

When Annette Birkin had shot him back in Raccoon City, it had hurt—it had hurt bad. Even after the wound had healed, his shoulder seemed intent on reminding him just how stupid he had been. It would ache when it rained or when he pushed it too hard. That heated twinge became a lifelong reminder of what happened—and what he would do again—when he acted with his heart instead of his common sense.

Since he had arrived in Pueblo and as the events of the last twenty-four hours unfolded in all their twisted glory, his pain threshold had been bullied to new heights as if some malevolent deity delighted in finding new ways of torturing him. Being skewered like a piece of meat had been the breaking point: he had reached his limit. Anything beyond and he would die before enduring it again.

Or so he thought.

When his ribs snapped and his shoulders split apart, he howled with lungs half-healed and still aching. On the Leon Scale of "I Want To Die", that pain registered about a three. The sensation of something ripping out his spine and then sticking all the jagged pieces back the wrong way—that was about a fifteen.

His vision doubled and he staggered as 'something' white and gleaming ripped free from his flesh and sliced the air in front of him. He had a glimpse of Saddler's wide eyes and gaping mouth before his glistening new limb cleaved the priest in two.

Saddler's aura flared and divided. Entrails hit the ground in a steaming pile. A wet sound bubbled from Saddler's throat and even wetter noises came from his upper body as furious tentacles erupted from the raw mess of filaments and organs. Three big rope-like limbs, one that had made his acquaintance already and two slightly smaller versions, burst forth and served as temporary legs.

Some distance away, and by a blood-spattered construction cone, Saddler's lower body recovered and propelled itself slowly toward the torso with a multitude of similar tendrils. Its aura had baby versions of the bigger snakes, and a pond instead of a sea to swim in. Their tongues flicked the air in distress.

And all the while, Saddler's eyes stayed locked with his, vibrant, aware.

_Adjustments are required, the weight is wrong._

_No, don't you dare, don't you fucking—_

The wing...thing twisted in the air and retracted with a sensation he couldn't even begin to articulate. The force of it sheathing itself knocked him off balance. His head smacked the steel plating, stars exploded bright and twinkled behind his eyes. Then the plaga took a heavy mallet and whacked his spine a few times. The muscles there went into a rolling spasm. His back arched, he clawed at the ground. One last hard crack between his shoulder blades for good measure, and it tossed the mallet aside.

_Better, more practical, now we finish this._

He had no time to protest. The plaga shoved his consciousness in the backseat of his mind and strapped him in. Satisfied he couldn't escape, the plaga took control of his limbs and turned his body over so he rested on his hands and knees. His head lowered, the plaga made him take a deep breath. Oh no. That meant bad things, bad, bad—

For the second time, the bone wings exploded from his back, spraying blood, bone and little bits of his skin. He screamed from his tiny seat and writhed against his bindings.

_Apologies, we are almost one, I can only dull the pain now, not erase it._

It frightened him how it could have been worse. His awareness muffled with cotton, Leon slumped in his seat and stared at the elegant constructs bending to either side of his body. Not your typical bird wings, not even close.

Slender ivory bones formed the feathers, each tapering to a slightly curved point. An ivory mesh of tendons connected these feathers with the main forearms and ligaments, but also allowed them both to separate. The plaga demonstrated this by flexing the wings in all sorts of impossible poses, even detaching the forearms from the smaller arms and vice versa.

"And each 'feather', as you so call it, is a blade," the plaga said from his mouth. "Flesh or stone, they cleave through both with ease. Powerful weapons, don't you agree?"

No, he didn't agree and he made sure the plaga knew it. _What the hell gives you the right to make wings? What's next? A tail? Horns? Those things better go back in when you're finished—_

"Stop fretting, they suit your form."

The plaga moving his body around and talking from his mouth was one thing, but these...appendages were the final insult.

_I'm not letting you mutate me into some freak. I want my body back! Give it over!_

"I will return your 'seat' when the task is finished."

Nearby laughter caught their attention. Saddler supported himself on his three dripping legs like a spider that had been stepped on, but not squashed completely. He didn't seem concerned that a few feet away, his lower body struggled toward him in a vain attempt to reunite. A double jolt of revulsion spiked through Leon _—_ his own, and the faint echo of the plaga's.

The plaga curled his lips into a smile, a mean one at that. It made his body stalk over to the priest and halt several feet away. Leon could sense its anger and disgust, but it also seemed uncertain of its own intentions. It would feed, yes, but then what?

 _What's the matter?_ Leon said, mimicking the plaga's tone and words when it had forced him to chase Ashley. _"The prey is near, why hesitate?_

"Silence, host."

"Keeping that American quiet may prove harder than you think, remnant." Saddler chuckled and blood sprinkled the ground beneath him. "Your control falters, as it should."

Saddler's giddy amusement seemed out of place. In his aura, the frantic snakes searched for their baby brothers in every direction but the right one. Swathes of energy spun out of his line of sight, toward Saddler's missing legs. Leon tried to swing his body that way, but the plaga kept his eyes fixed on the priest's face.

"We will end you, Sovereign. We will feast on your power, become one."

"Well then, what are you waiting for?" Saddler's eyes shone with delight. He must be in shock: the blood loss, the trauma must have taken a toll on Saddler's mental state. _Bastard's gone loonie tunes_ , his father would have said long ago and in a much happier time.

The plaga sauntered around the fallen priest, razor feathers clinking like tiny dangling pendants. From the left, Saddler's legs inched forward. The plaga saw this and made a growling sound. A delicate hiss of air and the battle for the torso ended in a splash of blood and the baby snakes winking out forever.

Saddler's smirk never faltered. "Oh, whatever will I do now?"

"You think this a game, always a game!" The plaga never moved, but the wings continued to cut Saddler's legs to pieces, each slash more vicious and angry than the first. "Will I ever be rid of you? Will I ever be free?" The words at the end came in a wrenched snarl, and with a rush of helplessness, the sense of an unavoidable fate. The plaga's hands shook. Leon sat in his seat and gripped the armrest, his mental knuckles white. The plaga's emotional state bordered on hysteria, a far cry from the aplomb persona making his life miserable before.

"Those are magnificent," Saddler said. If he was concerned over the fate of his legs, he didn't show it, nor did the mommy and daddy snakes seem to realize their babies would never come home. "Human flesh is pliable isn't it? I've seen such wonders carved from their bodies— the most beautiful now before me."

"As the spider weaves his web of lies, he forgets the fly can see him."

Guess the plaga took his spider analogy to heart. _Look,_ he said. _I don't know what your issues are with Saddler and I don't care. Finish what you started, kill him!_

Leon would be lying if he said he didn't enjoy this, playing the role of the plaga, giving back a little of the grief the worm had given him. The taste of one's own medicine is always bitter.

_Take pleasure in what you wish, my host, I hope your seat is comfortable. You may be in it for a long, long time._

_That's not funny,_ he growled and strained the straps as far as they would go. _You're deluded if you think you can hold me forever. I'll break free, I'll find a way. You'll have to sleep sometime, wormy. And when you do, guess who'll be driving then?_

Mental laughter, a nod of respect. _I chose well._

"Listen to me, remnant," Saddler spoke with deliberate care, as if trying to calm a wild horse that might trample him at any moment. "You're confused. Let me help you understand. You are a catalyst, a vessel containing wisps of thought and intentions, the final moments of the one I loved. When you feed properly, Mr. Kennedy will inherit those memories. You will cease to exist and I again, will have what is mine."

"You deserve death for what you've done to me—to us, to all of us." The plaga whirled upon Saddler so fast Leon's world spun. He gasped as harsh images flickered and spat around his mental prison: blood dripped from a white hand, fingers twitched, white petals fell, a massive black door with winged handles slammed shut, people screamed from distorted mouths—

"No," Saddler shook his head as if to rid himself of some great pain. Tears glittered. Saddler...crying, okay, now he knew he was hallucinating. This entire situation was too surreal to be real. "As soon as the attack began I sought you. I deserted my elders, left the front lines of battle to be with you. The city fell around me, the dying to either side of me, but I did not stop, I never stopped looking—"

This was a side of Saddler he didn't want to see. He didn't want remorse, tears, humility—or worse—humanity. The emotional speech affected the plaga to an even greater extent. Its indifference vanished, its once cold, apathetic thoughts scattered upon a wind full of hate, sorrow and fury. The images seesawing around him blurred and overlapped each other in a mindless parade of colors and sound.

"Lies, lies, lies! Madness the Sovereign cried when we did not obey! You bound your rotting soul to mine, you damned me in their eyes!" The plaga paced back and forth, its darting wings snapping inches from Saddler's nose. The priest did not move, didn't even flinch. He seemed stunned with some nameless emotion, his snakes frozen beneath an ocean of ice.

The plaga continued its rant, jabbing Leon's finger at the priest in accusation. "The last hunt, I remember it, every detail, every moment. I will show my host your crimes, I will show him the truth!"

"You remember the worst of it," said Saddler. "A distorted version of what really happened. There are more to those memories, so much more than—"

"The spider's sweet words are poison, this fly refuses to drink."

"Then show him this profound truth! Go on, remnant, feed and cease to be!" In a great heaving motion, Saddler shoved himself closer. The plaga recoiled as if it couldn't bear to be near him.

 _Damnit, end this!_ Leon kicked his seat in frustration. _He just offered himself to you! Take him!_

"Caution host, his tricks are many."

"Indeed," Saddler whispered, the sly smile returning. "A wise little remnant, but still so, so, careless."

Fear skittered through him, a watered-down version of the plaga's raw terror. "You can't use them," it said, shaking its head in disbelief, "I made certain of it!"

"Ah, but you forget. Humans are different than the last species we conquered. Better DNA, better bodies...better ways to hide weapons I thought I'd never use again." His aura bloomed, the snakes unfurled in some sort of euphoric dance that made Leon's imaginary cheeks burn. Saddler's tri-arms lifted his torso high to reveal a large pustule-like organ nestled under the white cage of his ribs. It glowed a brilliant orange, the membrane casing rising and falling in a liquid sigh—and when the membrane tore open and birthed a seething black mass of tightly clumped tendrils—the plaga reeled in horror.

"No, you will not have me!" it shrieked. He didn't think his voice could go that loud or that hysterical. The tentacles charged en mass, but peeled away from the main lump like strands of intelligent hair fleeing a skull.

The wings scythed through the approaching horde with precision and skill, but Leon couldn't pinpoint the reason for the plaga's irrational response. The tips of these creatures were not barbed or sharp, though a thick fluid oozed from dozens of tiny suckers dotting the length of the tendrils. The more movement they made, the more that syrupy liquid splattered to the ground. The plaga avoided those puddles with almost fervid concentration, as if touching a drop would mean death.

Saddler used the distraction to his advantage. He tensed his limbs, and like a grotesque frog, leaped on top of the steel pile his staff rested under. A single wave of his palm and it was in his hands.

The plaga kept its distance, most of the slime hair now lay twitching at its feet. The urgency diminished and its confidence returned. Leon saw the impatience in his body's stance, the restless way the wings moved—and that was good. He let out a sigh of relief, and the plaga echoed him for once instead of the other way around.

It focused on Saddler's ugly walking stick and snorted. "The sight of your squirming pet fills me with such dread." The plaga's sarcasm made Leon proud. "Will its big eye blink me into submission?"

"Yes." Saddler pointed the staff in the plaga's direction. "In fact, it will."

Leon couldn't feel what hit his body, but whatever it was caused the plaga to stumble backwards with a surprised cry. The wings drooped, the world swayed, and with a reluctant sigh, the plaga consciousness slipped away. One minute, there and vibrant, and the next, gone like smoke.

The straps vanished, the mental seat dissolved under his equally mental ass, and Leon tumbled into control with no idea what the hell had happened.

Two points of entry throbbed in his throat, a thin trickle of heat trailing from each. He raised a heavy arm and grabbed at what had struck him. Weakness stole the strength from his fingers. His hands went limp. Something weighed him down, disturbed his balance. The wings. The plaga had wielded them with no difficulty, but despite how thin and light they appeared, they were foreign to him—two extra limbs he had no idea how to control.

Saddler's power pressed against the things in his neck, driving whatever they were deeper into his skin. More warmth flowed, the weakness increased.

"Don't worry, Mr. Kennedy, these barbs aren't full of poison," Saddler assured. "They contain my blood, and the more of my blood inside you, the better I can control you—physically, at least." He raised his palm and invisible arms roped around Leon's armpits, jerking him from the ground and lifting him in the air. His spine bowed, his back went rigid. Immobilized and levitating like a magician's unlucky assistant, he could only glare at Saddler and hope his entrails snagged on something sharp.

"As lovely as those wings are, they will better serve us tucked away." A graceful flick of his wrists and Leon's wings folded and slithered back into his body. He would have given a noise of disgust if he had control of his mouth; he doubted he would ever get used to that feeling. He supposed Saddler helped him in a sense by chasing away the plaga puppeteer. He'd make sure he thanked the priest properly with a kick in the face when the bastard let him down.

"Now that I don't have to worry about you running off—" Beads of sweat trickled down Saddler's temples; his blood snakes quivered, pale shadows of themselves.

Leon watched as Saddler bent over, panting and shaking and aura pulsing. Then the priest raised his head and his voice rang out in Spanish. By magic, six ganado materialized from a door on the far side of the platform. Their ugly auras sloshed around them like green acid, but they looked healthy—not a speck of rotting flesh or dragging limb. Faces blank, they approached single-file and halted just shy of the beams Saddler squatted upon.

The priest nodded to the first in line and without hesitation, the ganado began climbing. When the creature reached his master, he bent on one knee and bowed low in supplication. Saddler gazed at his servant, a pensive king deciding how to honor such loyalty.

Then his mouth cracked his face open, and he bit the ganado's head off.

Saddler devoured the ganado like a starving dog, a messy meal he engulfed with great wolfing bites and throaty growls. His greed stirred Leon's beast into wakening. The thing (he knew now it was separate from the plaga, though he didn't know how or why) inside him sniffed at the bloody display with interest. Good thing he floated ten feet in the air. The thought he might have joined in, taken the last few in line while Saddler ate the rest, filled him with such self-loathing he wanted to curl into a ball and disappear.

He couldn't turn away, he couldn't close his eyes. The noises were the worst. If only they screamed, shouted, pleaded—something other than that awful silence and the sound of tearing flesh.

_Wake up! Pull it together—help me!_

A quiver in the darkness, a delicate stirring of air. _The Sovereign blood drains my will, I cannot help myself, I cannot aid you._

_Can't you neutralize it somehow? Don't you have some sort of...anti-blood secretions or something? I'm dangling like a fucking doll up here!_

A despairing sigh he not only heard in his head, but his bones hummed as the plaga's breath soughed through. _He's eating them! He's...eating them alive! What's to stop him from doing that to me?_ He wasn't proud of his fear, in fact, it shamed him. But he couldn't shake the images of those city streets filled with hungry mouths—some with teeth, some without—chewing and chewing their way through warm skin and still pumping blood. Not to him, not to him. He would die first.

A shivering sensation, the plaga's exhausted amusement. _"Host, the Sovereign rebuilds himself 'for' you, to feed you—us...one mind...soon. I will reveal the truth, what he hides from you and himself. He's almost finished...prepare..._

That didn't make him feel any better. And when he slid his eyes over he found Saddler had worked his way through the line and back onto the ground. He stood naked in the twilight, his ruined robes in a lumpy pool around his brand new feet. Blood stained his legs and torso, but he was whole again, his aura once more a bloody Medusa's head floating in a black sea.

Saddler turned and they locked eyes.

Leon skipped his gaze away, his heart pounding in his ears. He never wanted to see that look again on Saddler's face, and never again directed at himself. He stared at the far door, the one the sacrificial lambs had marched from. If he could break this hold on himself, and if he was quick enough, he might be able to—

A warm hand covered his chest. Leon flinched in theory, but his body stayed stiff. He made a sound in his throat that screamed "don't touch me!" but that didn't keep Saddler's aura away. The curious snakes nuzzled and groped his body, exploring him. The hand over his heart stayed there, thumb stroking in a parody of comfort.

"I do believe this is the first time I've seen you afraid, Mr. Kennedy. Astonishing after all we've been through." Saddler rotated his wrist and lowered him. The sensation felt bizarre, dreamlike. Dizziness nudged his thoughts in a woozy circle. "Not to worry. That chattering inside your head will end soon, I promise."

Fingertips, gentle and calloused, traced his lips. Leon wanted to bite them off. That violent desire flashed and vanished, leaving him wondering what he had thought to begin with. He struggled to keep his eyes open.

"The remnant can't be blamed. It's only acting on instinct, the urge to protect its host at all costs—even against its would-be savior." Saddler cupped the back of Leon's skull, tilted his chin up with his other hand. The Sovereign's life force besieged him on all sides. The smell of it, sour lemons and meat, should have sickened him, but it fomented his hunger to a higher state of lust.

"You are hungry, yes? All that fighting, all that energy the remnant used at your expense—and all just to spite me." Saddler's heated breath ghosted over Leon's chin. Deja vu, but this time the plaga had run out of gas. It made itself small and cowered between the folds of his brain. "I will show you its true purpose, who you are, who you will become. It begins," he whispered against Leon's mouth. "Now."


	5. Bells of Sorrow

Saddler's aura poured into Leon's mouth and expanded until every nerve flared and every muscle quivered. He went boneless, and Saddler crushed him closer, hand behind his neck and the other pressed against the small of his back. So much energy, so much - too much. With Ashley, he had to pull her aura into himself, he had to seek it. Saddler's power gushed like a fountain he couldn't turn off.

 _He saw_ _an ocean so red and vast and waves swelling beyond the horizon._

Saddler said, _So dive deep and I shall show you wonders._

The plaga's voice came as a sigh. _His wonders are horrors, nightmares, he is an abomination, an evil thing._

Pleasure unwound the last of his resistance, and his clothing became a barrier. He keened, but through the roar of the feeding, the sound reached his ears as a plaintive whine. Saddler lowered him to the ground and settled himself between his thighs. He sighed and arched his body. The wings trembled beneath his skin, desiring freedom. The ocean of power crashed and pulled him under.

The plaga snarled in his mind, its words for the intruder, Saddler _. Selfish beasts, you despise us, our strength, our defiance, you render us docile for fear we would challenge your tyranny._

 _How can you think we hate you?_ Saddler said. _You remind us to respect our hosts, to cherish their sacrifice._

 _You know nothing of true sacrifice, of what it means to cherish,_ the plaga said. _You caused the fall, your punishment was just._

_We remember the past differently, it seems. It is time to reclaim what we've lost. We can have perfection again, we can be one again. Yield and we can begin anew._

Leon opened his eyes to a world filtered through a dirty camera lens: shapeless blobs wreathed in gray fog, sounds in muted echoes. The camera lens turned, specks of sand blew away. Stained curtains fluttered in tatters from cracked windows, broken furniture littered once tidy floors. On the table where someone had tossed plates and silverware as afterthoughts, maggots made a feast out of a half-eaten steak, and mold furred what once had been a white loaf of bread. Rotten fruit oozed in the centerpiece bowl.

The typical and tragic interior of a Pueblo shack. The decaying scene seemed a parody of happier days, as if the ganado kept everything in its place as a reminder of what they had once and what they could never have again.

A chair in the middle of the room had a sleeping version of himself tied to it. The other Leon's head drooped on his chest, the sigh of his breath ruffling his bangs. He stared at himself, unable to grasp at first how he could be in two places at once. A funhouse mirror without the fun attached. Then the answer came when the familiar sight of purple robes and white eyes emerged from bedroom door. Saddler's memories. This must have been right after Mendez had knocked him out.

With a wave of an invisible wand, two ganado he could have sworn had not been there seconds ago, appeared to either side of the chair. Their eyes glittered with dull sense of duty. One had a syringe in his hand. A tiny shadow floated inside.

Saddler said _, I did choose you—I'm not sure the reason. Ah, but that is a lie, isn't it? It was a whim, really. I had waited so long, I had given up hope. I thought, why not? He has a handsome face, strong body, what if—_

Bitores Mendez rolled in front of Leon like a giant boulder. Where the hell did he come from? He glared at the back of the Spaniard's bald head and stepped around him. Mendez muttered and made gestures at the other Leon with quick dismissive flicks of his wrist. Saddler frowned, said something in reply he couldn't make out. Mendez lowered his arm and bowed in apology. Saddler said something else and this time the words "intoxicating power" drifted to his ears. The syringe descended.

_He thought I was wasting the remnant on an American swine. I told him I had tired of its fickle nature, rejecting one host after another. I made a vow to destroy you if the remnant did not manifest. And afterward, I would collect the embryo and wait again. I would lose nothing but time._

"I was just an experiment?" Leon asked the Saddler who took the empty syringe from the ganado and laid it next to the green fuzzy bread and the soupy fruit. The priest ignored his question and with a swirl of his robes, left the room. Mendez slung the unconscious Leon over his shoulders and followed. The lens clouded. Leon stumbled ahead, groping for balance in a world of mist and voices.

_You are more than that. Your strength amazed me, but I dared not hope. Many others showed potential, but all had ended in failure._

The world oriented, the lens flickered and scattered scene after scene of damage he had inflicted upon Saddler's creatures and minions: disjointed visions of himself shooting the ganado monks in the castle halls, the blind garrador he slew in the prison chamber, the novistador nest he destroyed, the creature called IT he managed to escape and eradicate—on and on the scenes flashed, a carousal full of spinning, bloody horses more gruesome and savage than the last. Mayhem by his hands. To be the cause of such violence, to be the _creator_ of it—

The plaga whispered _, Chaos, disorder, death...justice._

Was it justice? He had thought so. But the reasons beneath the reasons were—

_(They hurt me so I hurt them back)_

Complicated.

The world around him shifted, weathered sand stone spread under his feet and built itself into the remains of an ancient fortress. The sun had begun its decent, the approaching vise of deep blues and lush crimsons squeezed the golden ball back into the west. The other Leon stood over Krauser's motionless body, relief evident in the sigh that escaped him and the drop of his shoulders. His eyes betrayed the troubled state of his emotions. Regret, worry, a simmering unease. The other Leon squeezed the serpent emblem in his hand, the final piece of the puzzle required for Ashley's freedom, and slid it into his pocket. He had known Krauser a long time, the mission in South America, Manuela—

The plaga watched in interest _. A fallen warrior, brave, vain, one who made all the wrong choices, served all the wrong masters—_

 _Yes, the fool had pledged his loyalty to that red-eyed cur and thought I would not discover it,_ Saddler said _. Umbrella, we crushed that pest long ago._ _  
_

_(Are you certain?)  
_

_We endure,_ said the plaga _. We bring order, we bring death to the unjust, this is what we are, what we will become—_

_(I don't want it)_

_We are beyond wants and desires, leave the Sovereign to worry over petty things._

_This Sovereign grows impatient. Begin the merging, or I will do it for you._

_Nothing begins until I allow it, time is mine to keep._ Merry laughter tinged by madness, a manic child playing a game. _But as you wish, my lord._

The sunset vanished, but the glow remained; Krauser's body melted into the ground. A garden sprang to life around him. Flowers the color of ripened strawberries bloomed underfoot, a brilliant hybrid of roses and irises with folds so crimson they seemed to bleed. Petals spun drifted from unseen trees above and dappled the dark flowers in a pied blanket of ivory and yellow.

Birds sang, their calls so pure he could almost pluck them from the air. A melange of floral scents teased his nose and glazed his tongue with sweetness. Broken statues guarded a path of gray cobblestone, the details of their shapes obscured by the ever-sifting fog.

A tremor shook the earth, the stones lining the path crumbled to pieces. Those fragments fell into a spreading hole that barred its teeth and ate the ground around it. From the mouth of that abyss, a black metal door rotated out of the ground in a thundering rumble. The door, a thing of shadows and stone no human had ever built or ever seen, groaned to a stop and hovered in mid-air like the entrance to Hades itself. Ornate scrollwork knotted the frame and surface; lithe females arched their spines, clasped their thighs together, and spread their wings to form the ancient handles. No walls or ceiling on either side, nothing behind it, nothing around it. Just a door...floating there.

Dirt sprinkled from its base. Where its shadow touched, the flowers wilted and died. Whispers crawled across it, unseen spiders spinning webs of half-words and mutters. The etchings warped, the feminine handles writhed in what could have been pain or ecstasy. He had seen that door once before, and paired with a bunch of rather unhealthy images he'd like to forget.

"You should fear it. Vengeance comes to claim us."

A slender male stood behind him on the cobblestone path. The being was naked, dark bronze skin, golden hair to his waist, pleated with elaborate beading and shimmering things. Almond-shaped eyes appraised him, the irises so vibrant they cast violet reflections along the inner edge of his nose. His face resembled one of the many virile Greek gods, a straight nose with sculpted cheekbones and a strong jaw. But the humanity ended there.

His skin blended at his bony wrists to black, as if someone had dipped his hands in henna ink and neglected to do the rest of him. Arms relaxed at his hips, fingers reaching clear down to his knees, each one tapered to a nail-less point. Golden rings, two or three on each elongated digit, shone in the ruddy light. His ankles had the same black as the wrists, but the effect climbed to his calves. The bones in his ankles protruded as if he had a few too many, but they looked stronger than his matchstick wrists.

And no aura, not even a glow or twinkle.

"That gift is yours again when the merging is complete," said the male with a gentle smile. His voice had a curious lilt to it, a mixture of sounds that both pleased and tweaked the ear. The whispers behind him faded somewhat, the invisible spiders retreating into their dark corners.

"The plaga—remnant. It's...you?" He had expected something hideous, something to match the rage and arrogance of the intruder in his head.

"Beauty is the eye's deception," the plaga said in a voice too old for the mask of youth it wore. "I am a shriveled oddment of a soul, a purse filled to the brim with worthless treasures."

"Can you stuff your purse with some fig leaves or something? Maybe cover up with some strategically placed flower petals?"

The plaga laughed, his voice and age equals for a moment. "My lack of clothing embarrasses you, such innocence."

"I'm far from innocent. You should know, you've been babbling in my head for the last six hours." Now it was Leon's turn to laugh, a self-conscious barking sound full of more fear than he cared to admit. "I imagined a big nasty worm squirming around. Funny, when I get something figured out, that something makes it a point to prove me wrong. So...why now? Why wait until this magic mind meld thing to show yourself to me?"

"Like you, I cling to what is familiar." The plaga looked through him and Leon didn't have to turn around to know what he stared at. The door was a mouth on his neck breathing cold and heavy. The spiders were getting restless, their webs vibrating with impatience. _Enough of the small talk_ , they seemed to say, _get on with it. We got memories to catch and thoughts to eat. Busy busy spiders we be._

"What do I call you?" The plaga tilted his head at him, his expression a doll's version of polite. Petals clung to his hair like bits of fluff. Leon cleared his throat. "Doesn't feel right calling you plaga, or remnant when you look like something that just stepped out of a storybook. You had a name once, right?"

"Yes once, in another time, another place, another memory, I am what remains of the Indigo, Telgren."

"Telgren." Leon said the name slow, weighing it on his tongue. "Nice to finally meet you—I guess, even though I oughta kick your skinny naked ass for putting me through all this shit. For making me chase Ashley down like some dog, making me feeding on her, taking control of me, creating those screwed-up things you call wings—and a load of other crap I'll remember if you'd just give me a minute."

"I bore no malice to you, host, not even after the burning lights, not even after your defiance, not even after your ignorance."

"Telgren, we're on a first name basis, remember?"

"My apologies," Telgen said with a sly nod. "Which of your three names would you prefer? The one your father called you?"

The mention of his father chucked the last of his patience right out that ugly black door. "Rummage around in my head all you want, but don't think for a second you know me. Don't assume you've got special privileges all because you happened to ride a needle into my body. You're an uninvited thing I want gone—and not soon enough."

Telgren shot him a glare of reproach. "After all I showed you, after all my guidance, you spurn me?"

"You altered my body, you caused me pain. You made me do things that I can't even repeat without wanting to throw up—"

"My purpose always has been to protect you."

"Protect me from what? Saddler? I know what he's done to me—but what has he done to you? You never were clear about that. Even that ranting dance you did around him confused me more than it helped me understand."

Silence answered him. Telgren's eyes had strayed to the door again as if he kept forgetting it was there. The spiders made light of Telgren's discomfort and wove their webs faster and brighter. _Come play with us,_ they said, _we are hungry and thirsty and you look oh so delicious._

"And what the hell is it about this creepy-ass door?" He jerked his head in the direction of its looming presence. "Why is it here...hovering and whispering? I know something's on the other side, something we can't see."

"Do the spiders frighten you, Leon?"

Spiders. They had been on his mind for a while, ever since he became aware of the plaga and the baggage it decided to dump on him. He used spiders often in reference and the plaga noticed. He tried to push it away, but the memory nagged him, poked his arm, demanded attention.

When he had been a boy, his favorite creepy crawlies made the space between his two story ranch and the old tool shed in the backyard their wondrous home, a shadowy world full of silk and tiny predators that fascinated him for hours. And when Mary Kollins and Lenny Fockner weren't home to go swimming with or play down by the quarry, he would amuse himself by watching the spiders clog the narrow slot with their dazzling sticky strings, and pounce on any bug unlucky enough to fall into them.

But one day, and after a few hours of fruitless observation, he found not many insects were stupid enough to get stuck. That hardly seemed fair to him. Spiders had to wait all that time, what if nothing ever showed up?

He pondered this with all the seriousness an eleven-year old child could muster, and looked over his freshly-mowed lawn (mowed every Saturday, his father insisted, rain or shine) and the bright pink roses of his mother's garden. Then he caught sight of his victim jump-flying over the dandelions his father didn't quite dismember with the mower. He grinned, his dilemma solved. A grasshopper. Perfect size, didn't sting, bite, pinch, and was easy to catch.

He made a day of it, chasing the poor hapless creatures (and one cricket he found by accident by his mother's perennials) and plopping them into their version of grasshopper hell. He hunkered down to enjoy his handiwork without the tinniest stirring of guilt. They were only grasshoppers, not like they were pretty, or gave pollen to the flowers. And there were plenty of them compared to the spiders. What did it matter?

A few weeks later, and late on another boring summer day, he prepared for another round of gathering for his new friends. He leaned his head down to peek in on them and gave a noise of dismay. One of his spiders, a large one he had dubbed Banana Man because of its black body and yellow splotches on its underside, spun a cocoon of death around a struggling monarch butterfly.

On instinct he tried to save it, but when his fingers brushed the webs he had once thought amazing and beautiful, revulsion welled up so intense it brought tears to his eyes. He went around to the other side of the shed and tried again. No luck. The butterfly was too far in. He ran off to find a stick, but by the time he returned, Banana Man had its spindly legs clasped around the doomed butterfly, and feasted on what it probably considered the best meal it had enjoyed since that grasshopper some helpful little boy threw into its web.

The stick dropped from his fingers, he pressed his lips together.

He went to get the hose.

No, spiders didn't frighten him. What filled him with terror was the thought of an alien consciousness having access to his deepest, most private thoughts—and he couldn't do a damn thing about it. Like the grasshoppers he had so casually tossed to the spiders, he was at the mercy of this creature and his enemy, two beings intent on dragging him into their twisted world of hate and love and misery.

"Let me go," he said. "You know Saddler chose me randomly, and I won't pay for some stupid decision made by an overgrown worm who thinks he's a priest. You slither on out my nose or ears or wherever you have to go to get the hell away from me—but you go on. Get out and take your fucked-up door with you. If it isn't my memory, it isn't my problem."

"There is no escape for you—or I, we all have roles to fulfill, an endless chain of choices and consequences." Telgren twisted like a reed nudged by a slow flowing river and drifted nearer. He was close enough now to make out the details of his bracelets and rings, the strange blending of color at his wrists—which really wasn't as smooth as he'd first thought. He expected an airbrush effect, but a scale pattern textured the skin above the knot of bone, tiny oval lines that got smaller and thinner the higher they went. "The Sovereign began the chain with their pride, we shall end it with our justice."

"You keep saying that. Justice for what?"

"All will be revealed when the merging is complete."

"That isn't good enough."

"To argue with me is to argue with sunlight, with rain, with waves, with leaves, such as I am, a fleeting thing."

"Fucking metaphors—"

"I am tired of this palaver," Telgren said. He stopped swaying and squared his shoulders. "The door grows weak, the memories a tide against it, let us begin."

He backed away as Telgren advanced. The spiders perked up, their once drooping eyes now alert and glittering. This was what they had been waiting for, the final confrontation.

"Stay the fuck away from me, you crazy worm." By sheer luck he avoided tripping over a statue head when his foot smacked it and sent it rolling. The ground felt lumpy under his feet, hard mounds of dirt that would have him eating flowers if he didn't watch where he was going.

"Yes, the Sovereign believe we are mad, I will show you why, I will show you what became of that madness." Even his footsteps were elegant, graceful motions akin to a deer or horse. It became hard to ignore the hypnotic sashay of Telgren's body, the way his long pointed fingers never quit moving, the tinkling of the rings as they caressed one another—

_In the Real World, Saddler's hands stroked his back and lower and lower, cupping him there, pressing him closer, under his shirt, against his skin, so warm, so eager._

He gasped when Telgren dropped his hands on his shoulders, the smell of him, a scent he couldn't even begin to describe washed over him in a hot, oily cascade. Drowning again, drowning in butter and honey and blood and salt and—

Telgren curled his fingers around his arm and breathed into his mouth, "Let me show you everything."

_He runs because he has no choice, they are near, they are close, they almost have him. One hall leads to another, so many halls, so many places to hide and all the wrong places. Soon they will find him, soon they will—_

_He fights a sob and cries out to his master through the binds that tie them. I need you, I need you! Please hear me, come for me! But he knows his master cannot aid him, he fights the Unbound with the elders, the ones who—_

"What the hell? Get off me!" Leon elbowed Telgren in the face. His vision filled with spirit halls and archways, the white floors he had been—

(No, not me, Telgren, he had been the one running)

Telgren's hands found him again, his skin feverishly hot, his grip desperate. "Do you hear them, Leon? Do you hear—"

_The bells, he had forgotten to take them off. No wonder they keep finding him, how foolish! He bends and rips the delicate chains from his ankles and throws them down. Blood drips, then the wounds heal. He runs again and this time others join him, all tainted bound who have been separated from their Sovereign masters and mistresses by either death or misfortune. The damned run for their lives, for their souls. We will free you! the Unbound scream, we will end your suffering! Their ululating shrieks send terror through the small cluster of survivors. Their pace quickens. One female slips, falls with a cry, but they do not stop, they cannot stop, if they do_ _—_

Leon fell to the ground. Where his weight crushed, the flowers bled. He recoiled, scrambled backwards into Telgren. There was something in the flowers, those lumps, they were—

_The door looms ahead, the private sanctuary of his master. He will be safe there, they all will be. Safe and hidden. They might make it, they might see their precious Sovereign again. Why does he still hear the bells? They tinkle nearby, a spirit knell he cannot locate. No heel in their group bears the chains, they all had cast them away. Why do they ring?_

_They reach the door and beyond it. They shut it tight, turn the locks that had been ancient long before the first Sovereign took flesh. They huddle together, give comfort to one another. Silence for a moment, the sigh of relief, but then the ringing begins anew. Not just him, they all hear it now. They look at each other in confusion...then with sinking hearts, they look toward the black door._

_The laughter rises, the pounding begins. So many hands, they sound like drums. He can smell the blood on the other side. We know you're there, the Unbound say. We've come to return what you've lost, what you tossed aside so carelessly. Can you hear them ringing?_

_The door, once so strong and unyielding, buckles._

Behind them and in eerie tandem with the vision, the whispers swelled, the spiders grew to the size of fists. Laughter, a choked cry, a far off scream. The voices approached from an imaginary hallway, running footsteps and tinkling chains. Something thumped against the door, the voices waxed and waned, the webs spun out of control. Another thump, more force this time, more insistent. _We know you're there,_ it said. _We know, we know, we can smell you, can you hear the bells?_ The thumps became violent, dozens of them now, bodies barreling into the other side at a full-out run. The door shuddered, the spiders darted to all corners and disappeared. Hundreds of hands pounded with all their strength. The frame shook, more dirt sprinkled free.

Blood on his hands. Something in the flowers, something bleeding. He panted, sweat dripped down his face and trickled down back. Telgren caught his arm with a gleeful sound born of a laugh and a sob. In that tight grip, something slithered beneath Telgren's skin, something alive, something that pressed against his palm as if it meant to come through. "Do you feel it, Leon? They are all inside me, every memory, every dream, every thought—the ringing, the bells never stop ringing—every birth, every death, all of them ringing, ringing, ringing—"

Once more he threw Telgren off and charged past him. Desperation forced him close to door's shadow. Nothing but sludge there now, the flowers had rotted into a primordial soup. A muddy slurping sound, and the soup parted to reveal corpses in the likeness of Telgren's species. They all bore horrific wounds, heads missing, limbs severed, faces torn open. Leon gagged, lost his balance.

Telgren made a grab for him and he dodged. The blackened flesh at the Indigo's feet and hands had begun to spread to the rest of his body. Where it traveled, his skin cracked and curved into bigger, thicker scales. These scales moved and joined together, two by two. Once united, they flexed and attempted to tug themselves free. The tips changed color: black brightened into blue, deepened into red, ripened into purple. The tips lengthened, grew thin, transparent, and... _fluttered_. Oh God, not scales, not scales at all. Wings.

"We must become one, we must escape!" cried Telgren. His little soon-to-be butterflies fluttered and flopped as if trying to alight from a puddle of sticky taffy. They covered the Indigo from his head to down to his string-bean toes. Telgren knelt and hugged himself, sobbing. That image sparked a memory and Ashley's voice came suddenly from nowhere and everywhere.

_I'm cold Leon, I can't feel me anymore._

Shrieking, but not behind the door this time. On it. The winged handles screamed as if someone was attacking them with a crowbar and prying them free one pewter feather at a time. They writhed again in that strange dance of agony and pleasure; he couldn't look at them without feeling a stirring in his loins and horror at his response.

Leon ran for the trees that he knew—despite the fog covering them with its smoky breath—would be on the other side of the quaint cobblestone path.

Like a vengeful spirit, Saddler emerged from the mist and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. "Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Kennedy, all this fuss!" he said. "The remnant is about to grant you a wondrous gift, the highest we can offer mortal flesh."

Unfortunately, this time he didn't have his razor wings, he didn't have the plaga, all he had was his human strength—and compared to Saddler's, he might as well try beating up a brick wall. But that didn't stop him from flailing and kicking like a wild man. Saddler punished him with a squeeze that send his blood slamming against his forehead and trickling out his nose. He slumped, woozy and breathing heavy.

A howl rose, a legion of souls crying out in ecstasy, hatred, fury. Saddler winced, pulled him back. Telgren covered his ears and his butterflies pressed flat. The door buckled, one hinge flew free. Leon expected the voices to trickle out the sides like water before the door exploded. He braced himself, anticipating the worst.

Then everything stopped. The voices, the pounding, even the whispers that began it all.

The silence didn't bring relief, it resonated with its own terrible sense of dread.

_Feed, become one._

"Your assistance shames me!" Telgren teetered to his feet, his butterflies moving in a delicate ripple of rainbow wings. Beautiful, but then so was a lion before it pounced, a hawk before it dove.

"I give it, regardless."

He came toward them, a lanky brown doll made out of furling paper. "He is strong, he will resist you."

"This isn't matter of conquest, this is a chance for reconciliation."

"Call it what you wish, it is all the same to me."

Thoughts of escape blinked on and off like the lights on the platform bridge. A mass of folding wings buried Telgren's once handsome face. One butterfly broke free from his cheek, but some invisible force kept it from flying away. Telgren's gaze bored into his own. Ancient eyes; eyes that had seen wars and uprisings and rebellions and revolutions, and had seen every age of reckoning.

"Wait, wait a minute!" He knew he was on the verge of losing it, of losing everything that made him who he was. "I have nothing to do with this! I have a mission to complete, I have to finish it. I have a...home, a life—I have a sister—I have a sister and her name is Leslie, and she'll know, she'll know something's happened to me. Your wars aren't mine! This isn't right, this is bullshit...you can't just—"

"Be silent!" Saddler shoved him forward by the back of the neck, offering him as a sacrifice to the butterfly god. "Do it. Take his mind, take his body, make him yours. And then I will make him mine."

"May he be the one to finally end you." Telgren extended his hands. Leon drew up as best as he could in the grip Saddler had on him. Fine then, if this was his final act as himself, he would do it with dignity.

"Leon," Telgren murmured low and soft. "The ringing is yours now."

The remnant's body exploded in a whirl of nacreous wings. Saddler planted his feet to keep him from thrashing as the butterflies swarmed over him. The core of Telgren's body disappeared—all except his eyes, those awful violet eyes that locked on his own.

_Be strong, don't falter, this part is the worst._

The swarm dove into him, each wing piercing him like a blade and each blade carrying a memory, an image, an emotion. So many dreams, hopes, fears, thousands, millions of years and years and—

He screamed. The sheer magnitude, the weight of those thoughts forced him to his knees, words not his tumbled over each other in a mad rush to see which could rent his mind first. He lost himself in the maelstrom of wings, each butterfly a world experienced as someone else, another host, another species. He couldn't bear the onslaught; he was being drowned, being set on fire, being torn to shreds, being gutted, being eaten alive, and at the same time, he was rising from a battlefield, waking at dawn, gasping for air, opening his eyes, feeding on someone for the first time, the last time, crying out as he died and revived as someone new.

To protect itself, his consciousness mind fled out of reach, out of sight.

_You must endure this. It's why the remnant chose you. Not many can survive the merging, it takes a strong soul, one I know you have._

That voice, he knew it. It had a name. The current of memories tugged him away and from the safety the voice promised. If they pulled him too far he wouldn't get back.

_Yes, I'll be your anchor. Cling to me._

The dark shape swam near and he reached for it in a wild panic. The sea receded, the tide of what was and what had been before rolled away from him and left him in peace. He felt gorged, yet empty, his mind a raw thing that cowered in a tight ball, whimpering and hurting. The dark creature nuzzled him, drew him near.

A warning flashed, a whisper of caution.

 _Hear me!_ said a voice. _Don't let the Sovereign bond, don't let him take you, you'll end up like the others—_

The creature lowered him to the grass and his awareness split. Two places held him captive: one physical, where something warm thrust against him and created pleasure that made him buck and strain. The other was here, with this being that stroked his soul, teased it from its hiding place and embraced it as a lover. He moaned, his non corporeal form twisting in delight at the attention.

_You sense the familiarity, don't you? We are old lovers, my first and last. I have loved every form you take, every shape. I have gone without you too long._

The creature—

_(I know his name, his name is)_

ran its hands over his body, no clothing here to hinder its affection. He gasped when its hand dipped between his thighs and he rose to meet it. But that feeling of unease continued to distract him. The creature's mouth covered his, its tongue exploring deep, tasting him.

And the hooks sunk in.

He yelped, tried to struggle. More memories spun in his vision, but they belonged to the creature holding him prisoner. Slaves he had conquered before, made before, taken before. The hooks went deeper, grew barbs that poked the tender, exposed flesh of his spirit. His fighting turned frantic.

_I do this to save you, to protect you, without guidance you will destroy yourself._

_(No! I know the real reasons for this. I know, I know, I know—)_

Reality slapped him in the face with a palmful of fire nettles. His world exploded around him with bright bursts of sound and flashes of light. His eyes opened, but he couldn't see. He flailed, rolled onto his stomach. A woman shouted. A roar of inhuman fury answered. Angry popping sounds, more explosions, fire eating holes in his skin, his flesh melting away. Terrified, he clawed at his face. All intact, no blood, no wounds. Good, that was good. But why was he blind?

He tried to speak and a croak emerged. The woman swore. Another explosion, louder, angrier. Something roared past his ears, the heat of it so close he could smell his hair singeing. Metal collapsed, something crashed all around him. Cold things pelted his body. He crouched, covered his head. Another unearthly shriek and the fierce urge to aid, to give assistance flooded him.

_(He's under attack, he needs me, he)_

_No, you escaped the binding,_ a male voice chided him. _You fool, flee, don't let him sunder your soul._

 _Leave him, run away, hurry, get out of sight,_ agreed a different voice, female this time.

The voices retreated and darkness lightened, shapes had form again. The world couldn't make up its mind what it wanted to show him. Petals fell then disappeared. Grass grew from the steel floor, withdrew, then grew back again. He tried to stand and failed.

_Come to me, free me, I need you!_

A large metal frame lay in a tangled mess over two platforms, trapping a naked man—the Sovereign, who bellowed and tossed the huge beams aside as if they weighed nothing. His upper jaw flopped at his throat, a thick fold of skin the only thing keeping it from detaching completely. It healed as he watched, the flesh sprouting tiny threads that stitched themselves into the damaged parts with the skill of an expert weaver. Blood drenched his face and coated his body in large dripping patches. And no eyes...no wonder he had been blind. The Sovereign's aura churned with serpents breathing fire and spitting in rage.

Those serpents called to him, but this was a siren song he had the strength to refuse. The bonding. Not finished, not complete. He was still free. Elation flooded him, but with it came the renewed sense of duty, of purpose. The Sovereign had to die, he was an abomination, a tainted soul not meant for flesh. And as an Indigo, he was the Creator's hand, His tool to wield. He would deal the Sovereign's punishment.

"Leon!" The woman's aura, a dark violet that shrouded her golden core, assailed him on all sides. His hunger slept in its cave, sated for now by the Sovereign's energy—the only thing the creature was good for. He yanked his arm out of her hands, not interested in what she had to offer. A frown flashed across her face; her aura swayed closer, uncertain. "I'm sorry, I only had one shot with the launcher. I...missed. I didn't want to hit you." She shot a worried look in the direction of the Sovereign. The silly thing thought that creature was a threat. His enemy was helpless, treed by the steel of his own construct—what did she have to fear? "The way Saddler's throwing metal around, we only have minutes to get below...Leon, what's the matter?" She tried to touch him again and he snarled at her. She blanched and reached for her weapon. An inherent reaction, one practiced and natural. This female was a warrior. He narrowed his eyes, his own weapons moving under his skin, preparing to defend or cleave on his command.

"Yes! Kill her! Destroy that American cunt!" the Sovereign roared and he threw another beam to accentuate his point. For every piece of steel he removed, another took its place. He remembered a game like that, but its name slipped away somewhere in the waters of his mind. He lost interest in the woman and looked inward. The bond threads hummed between them, but their ends frayed like wet twine. He gathered them in his mental palm and snapped them in two. The Sovereign flinched and a sound escaped him that might have been a sob or a cry of anger. By his aura it was both.

"I am not your whore." He walked up to the metal cage and grinned at the ancient creature glowering back. "Your hooks went deep, Sovereign, but not deep enough. Tell me, how would you like to die? Slowly? Quickly? I'm in a generous mood, I may even let your servants live."

 _Careful, child, danger!_ said a woman in his mind with red curls and a tiny pert nose. She peered through the dark with his eyes and a faint purple aura haloing her body. If he went closer, he would see the reds and blues within its core. _Our bane still lives inside him, he will use it if you come near!_

His wings sprang free and pressed against the Sovereign's throat. "If I see so much as a twitch from that repulsive organ under your ribs," he said, "I will have your servants devour you alive." In another time, in that hazy period before the merging began, these weapons had been difficult for him to use. Now he could manipulate them with ease —and he demonstrated this by flicking one feather across the Sovereign's fleshy chin while the others stayed at his throat. Blood spurted, then dribbled, then stopped.

"Destroying me will not be easy." The Sovereign's voice and aura conveyed a gentleness that confused him. "We must finish what we started. Your mental state will continue to degrade if we do not. Already I can see the madness in your eyes—"

"What you call madness I call clarity."

"Clarity?" The laugh infuriated him so much, he raked a feather over the Sovereign's lower lip. But through the blood, the laughter sputtered on. "Tell me of this clarity, then. What is your name?"

"Leon," he replied without hesitation.

"The cunt told you that. What is your father's name? Your mother's? Sister's? Who is the meddlesome bitch behind you? Tell me, pequeño, prove me wrong."

He searched inside him again, but found nothing but a sea full of distant islands and scraps of memories scattered on each. His sight faded in and out, his head ached. "I may not know who I am, but I know what you are and what I must do."

"That duty ended a long time ago, why can't you see that?" Sovereign began and shut his mouth when the tip of his wing swiped again. The tiny river of red trickled over his collarbone and trailed down his chest. To his dismay, the Sovereign leaned into it, and the river widened into a large stream. "Go on then, end me. See if you can. The memories will stop you. We know each other, we have sang this song many times."

"Are you getting this?" said the woman in a hushed tone. The fact she had come this close without him knowing told him he needed to rest, to regroup. To add to his already exhausted mental state, the Sovereign's cage had begun to warp before his eyes, it became a pit with black spikes, a towering prison full of blades, a—

"Yes, I am. Quite intriguing."

Not one of his voices. This male spoke from an square device attached to the woman's hip. He knew the name of it, but remembering names made his temples throb. His mind drifted to the fragments on the open sea, islands that would float away forever if he did not swim to them soon.

"Look at me, pequeño, hear me." The Sovereign pressed against the steel bars, his yearning striking a chord within him. Before his eyes, The Sovereign's skin changed to bronze and his hair to gold.

_(His name...what was his name?)_

And that face morphed into another humanoid, a woman with flaming red skin and four arms. Uncertainty reeled his wings back into place and he stepped away. "Yes, that's it," the Sovereign crooned. "Do you remember me now? Don't be afraid, I would never hurt you—"

"Oh Osmund, we all know that's a lie," said the strange man. He sounded cheerful, but the undertone of cunning betrayed him. The male had knowledge of who the Sovereign were; he knew their tricks. Who was he?

"Silence, Umbrella fool." The Sovereign hunched his back, the skin protruded and stretched as tentacles moved underneath. "You couldn't even begin to comprehend nor fathom the importance of what has happened here—of what I've discovered."

"Then enlighten me, oh great one," said the man. The woman unclipped the device and raised it in the air. Against the night sky, the bright window cast a small reflective blotch upon the ground. Inside the window, a man with golden hair and dark glasses leaned forward upon a desk from another place in the world, and folded his gloved hands under his chin. His aura flamed around him, the edges tinted a bright azure. Not human, not like the female. But not Sovereign either.

Curious, he approached the small window in the woman's hand. Something about the male nudged his hunger from its sleeping curl. It yawned, smacked its lips. The man looked at him, his lips curving into a subdued, but delighted smile. Behind his glasses, his eyes glowed like embers. "Hello, there."

"Do not speak to him!" Spittle flew from the force of the Sovereign's words and the tentacles he had been busy constructing inside him burst from his shoulders in a spray of gore. The woman veered to the side—and he leaped to the other as the appendages groped for them through the spaces between the beams.

"My, my, what a temper. You know you're only making it worse for yourself," said the man with a chuckle when the woman brushed the device off and checked for damage.

"Yes, laugh you powerless fool, laugh from the hole you cower in! You sent your slut and your idiot to do your dirty work because you are feeble, human. You are nothing!"

"Saddler, you call this variation...Indigo, right?" asked the man. His aura sparked and flared as if someone out of sight fanned his flames.

"Wesker," said the woman in warning. "All because Leon can't remember now doesn't mean he won't remember later."

"Whatever Saddler has done seems to have altered Mr. Kennedy's perception. Perhaps he will never recover at all. You should prepare for that."

"Do not speak of me as if I'm not here!" he growled. If this blond creature thought he could control him, then that made him no different from the Sovereign.

"Do not listen to him!" The Sovereign ceased thrashing his tentacles and put them to work clearing the steel debris. A stack of beams cluttered the ground, and the prison appeared less confining than before. The woman's plan to get below seemed wiser each passing moment. "He has no idea what you are, what you are capable of. You belong to us, you are one of us!"

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Mr. Kennedy. How about you follow Ms. Wong and she'll help you find a safe place to rest your head. You look a bit...fatigued."

He looked down at the remains of his shirt, the gaping hole he didn't quite remember how he received and the blood caking the hem of his pants—

_(bodies pressing, warm hands, the slide of fingers over flesh)_

And decided the man was right. He did need to recuperate from the botched soul binding and plan his next move. The Sovereign's ganado would need cleansing—only the strongest of them would do. If he could glean enough ganado on his side, defeating the Sovereign would be a walk in the park—

(A _piece of cake, easier said than done, easy as pie, easy as one-two-three)_

Memories sloshed in his head, words and phrases bobbed like corks. His islands seemed so far away. He looked up at the night sky. The stars were all wrong, not in the right places. The plain white moon became two moons, one large and red, the other small and green. Then those moons rolled into four moons, thee plain white, but one had rings so large they speared the horizon. He staggered into the woman. She steadied him and took his hand in hers. She smelled like peaches and white wine. Her aura cradled him in arms of blue violet with golden trim. "I can't find the right island," he said as if she could point him in the right direction. "I'm trying, but I can't swim anymore."

"Ms. Wong, escort Mr. Kennedy below. I believe he won't resist this time."

"No! You will regret this, dog! Mongrel! Infidel! I will find you, I will crush what you love and tear it to pieces as you watch!"

"Of course you will. Nice talking to you, Osmund, I'll see you soon. Adios."

The Sovereign howled and shook his prison like an enraged primate. His tentacles whipped and cracked at the steel. His aura soared above the beams as if it would set him free by pulling the very air around it.

When the woman yanked him toward the lift, he didn't protest. The Sovereign slammed himself into steel and sent most of his cage tumbling to the ground. He had to dig his way out, but the feeling he would follow soon augmented their pace into a run.

Once inside the elevator contraption, and after the woman jabbed the button marked DOWN, she said, "Leon, look at me, please. Do you remember me at all?" Her aura colors draped over one another: sadness, guilt, regret. He couldn't answer her, nor did he want to. Instead of a jittery elevator that creaked and clanked as it descended, he traveled in a glass pod that moved in a gliding downward spiral. A mountain range stretched before him, the highest peaks crested with ice pink snow. A ocean of green shimmered beyond that. Flying creatures with striped forked tails and red wings circled their pod, their name a glittering shell on one of his islands. He rested his head on the railing and shut his eyes.

"Don't jar his memory just yet. I prefer him this way, no muddled emotions to deal with."

"Of course," said the woman. "But what if Saddler's right and his mental state is degrading. That might cause problems."

"True, but I'm sure you can handle things until I get there."

He affirmed not to trust this man. Not even his female liked him. A crash above and the woman inhaled in surprise. He should have killed the Sovereign when he had the chance, given him a taste of the Creator's glory. The Sovereign had been forbidden to take flesh and they defied that punishment. For that they all would die. These convictions resounded with holy echo in his head, but he began to have doubts. The words the Sovereign spoke haunted him.

_We know each other, you and I, we have sang this song many times._

Was it true? Why couldn't he remember?

No sign of their enemy and the woman relaxed. She tapped the railing with her fingernails, every vibration reaching him with a cold shiver. "But if he happens to remember..."

"As I said, I prefer that he doesn't. Keep him out Saddler's reach until I arrive. I'm bringing extensive reinforcements...and the Blood Angels. They haven't had an outing in a while, should be fun."

"Only you would think so. What about the girl?"

"If you do not dispose of her, I will. She'll complicate matters."

The woman sighed as if she knew all along he would say that. But if she knew, why did she ask? These people were so odd. He opened his eyes. A bird with a tail longer than his arm flew by. He tried to touch it, but his fingers grasped air.

"Your ETA?"

"Three hours. Be ready."

* * *

Pequeño: Little one

Chico: boy

Adios: I think you know that one.


	6. Three Blind Mice

They said his name was Leon and told him to run. They made him run through bone-colored tunnels that never seemed to end. _Ganado are coming this way_ , the woman said, and yanked him toward another tunnel full of shadows and dust. They ran again and the world started tilting, whirling and blurring. The woman bore his weight without complaint, never faltering in her step. She was strong, a warrior, but the girl running behind them never ceased her mewling. _Ada, give me a weapon, let me help you_. The woman refused the girl's pleas with a patient sigh. _Should have taken my keys when you had the chance, Ms. Graham._  
  
The doors they passed started to change colors, white to gray to black. Winged handles. Far in the distance, the ghostly ringing of bells. His heart choked him. He was damned. They all were damned. _Slow down, Ms. Graham, he's getting sick again_. He shrugged off their hands, their words, their lies. No, everything would not be alright. Fools. Didn't they understand their world was ending? The Sovereign would enslave or kill them all. _We can't rest here_ , said the woman, _they'll search this section soon_. And then they were running again through more tunnels of nothing.

They stopped at another door. It stayed white. Safe. _Real_. On the other side, the same tunnel bending in a new direction. Stone walls at the end. Dripping. Cracking. He closed his eyes. Stop. Breathe.

He shook. Sweat seeped through the ruins of his shirt. His soul was coming apart, he knew it, he felt it. Inside his mind he swam though an ocean of breath and words, thick, smothering, like swimming through mud. Islands loomed in the distance, monstrous constructs built from distorted memories and forgotten experiences. A fire burned on one, the smoke so pungent it coated his throat like tar. That island had a name, had a name—

"Crap." The girl noticed he had stopped and ran to his side. Her aura curled around him, soft and lambent. So hard not to snatch it from her and keep it for himself. "Not in the middle of the hall, Leon." She tugged on his arm as if she meant to pull it off. "Come on, we gotta keep moving!"

"Let him rest," said the woman. "We're fine for now." She set down the silver case she had purloined from a dented locker several hallways ago, and appraised him. Maybe she would buy him if the price was fair. The Sovereign held auctions all the time; they made games of it, fondling the merchandise until they squirmed, chaining them to poles, leaving them crying and begging to feed.

He couldn't meet her eyes. Her face kept changing into other women, women once lovers and enemies—sometimes both. He wondered why that was. The girl liked to call the woman different names. Miss Wong, Ada, and then, You Bitch. She used the last one often.

"We're not fine," the girl said. "We won't be fine until we find a way out. Are you sure you know where you're going?" Her aura made a violent sway in the woman's direction. "It's confusing down here, and nasty. Can't you smell that? Like old meat or piss or something worse. It fucking stinks! Why does everything here _stink_?"

"Calm down, there's another exit at the end of this hall. We'll head down there after Leon pulls himself together."

"I don't think there's anything left to pull together. You haven't been looking at him, at how he's been acting. He doesn't even know who we are!"

"He knows. Somewhere in that mess Saddler made of his mind, he knows."

"I think he's broken, really broken. He's never going to be the same even if he does remember." The girl's shoulders lifted in a helpless shrug, and water gathered in her eyes. Her voice in his head, words spoken after he and the woman had exited the rusty elevator. _My God, Leon, there's blood all over you! Where's it coming from? What did Saddler do?_ In his ocean, spectral reflections wavered in the water: a twinkling tree full of lights, a woman singing. The girl's memories. He had fed on her once. Why hadn't he killed her?

"You don't give him enough credit." The woman glanced around to confirm nothing had followed them into their temporary sanctuary. The light above cast everything in sickly yellow - and the woman's dress was suddenly on fire. Flames engulfed her body, her dress falling away, her flesh melting and turning black. Her hair alighted, rising from her shoulders as it burned. He blinked. The fire vanished. The woman continued speaking as if nothing had happened. "I've seen him survive worse, most of it back in Raccoon. Let him work it out for himself."

"You're forgetting he eats people now."

"We'll find alternatives to that...little issue."

"Who's this mysterious we? It's 'we this' and 'we that'. Who are you working for?"

"We—meaning you and I—can have this discussion another time. Unless you'd rather get caught and infected with a baby plaga again." The woman unclipped her device—the one that had what the girl called "Spy Quest"—and stared at it. The walls behind her bled; then they cracked open. Blackness behind them; then nothing behind the blackness. Empty spaces, endless falling. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to listen to the woman speak. Her voice soothed him, made the visions fade, gave him some semblance of sanity. Something about her warmed the ocean waters, made the island a little clearer, a little closer.

"I have a feeling you and I have been bumped down on Saddler's list of priorities," said the woman. "He'll probably just kill us and be done with it."

"Oh, that's encouraging," said the girl. "I said earlier I wanna gun. Will you shoot something that has one, please?"

"No shooting, no noise. I want to keep Saddler guessing where we've disappeared to. These maps I have are for the original facility, one built before he even arrived in Spain. I think he's forgotten about these lower levels. From the state of neglect, no one's been down here in a long while." The woman poked the device and it made a beeping noise. He wanted to snuff out its cold soulless aura and eat the woman, absorb whatever magic she had that chased away the waking nightmares. No. Not right, not nice. She was important, somehow. Her and the girl. They were helping him in their own clumsy way.

"You can't leave me with nothing. Give me a grenade then, a knife, a paper cutter—something that makes things bleed." She hesitated a moment, then added a small, sincere, "Please?"

A sharp smile thinned the woman's lips. Her aura gave a sly twist of blue light. "I'll offer again, last chance. Take my keys—"

"You'd like that wouldn't you? Get me out of the way so you can do whatever you want. Sorry, not going to let you. He wouldn't leave me. I won't leave him."

"Are you certain about that?"

"He's not like _you._ "

The two females glowered at each other, their auras trembling swathes of color. Never mind the eating, he just wanted to kill them. Then maybe their faces would stop changing. One mask to another mask. Make believe faces, daydreams. Their auras stayed the were real. This moment was real. Now. Not the past. The past would eat him alive if it caught him. Crunch his bones, spit them out.

He giggled at that, the sound tumbling into a low groan. The females jumped, their eyes ( _always strange, always wrong_ ) darted over him like nervous butterflies ( _t_ _he ringing is yours now_ ). The urge to kill rose again, but in his mind, he ducked under the voice ocean, cold songs to sing away the rage. But even under the waves he could still smell the fire, hear the screaming of people not alive. Hungry people. He dove deeper.

Dream places, images of a spring evening, a porch swing, yellow water called lemonade, and in the background, in the woods tinged red by the setting sun, the sleepy chirping of crickets. A man sat next to him on the swing, his blue uniform velvet in the waning light. The badge on his breast winked silver, the name blurred by red.

_Daddy, I want to be a po-leece man like you._

_Only if you love people, Scott. And even if you love 'em, you gotta love 'em at their worst._

"Can we get moving?" the girl said. "I don't like how he looks—I don't like how he's looking at _us_. I think he's getting hungry again."

"If he is, I can deal with it."

"Oh what, you got a secret tranq gun hidden under your dress?"

"I have many things under this dress, though I doubt you'd be interested in most." The girl made a retching noise that the woman ignored. "Anyway, last door on the left looks like the best choice. Then one more level and we'll be at the caverns. A little beyond that is the beach. We'll rendezvous with my transport there. It's not far now," she added in a soft voice, and looked at him. "Leon, are you alright?"

"The Sovereign like games." In his mind, he left the porch, fled from the man that made him feel sad and lonely. He glided over the forest, over mountains, over oceans, and finally into a cave at the base of a towering white cliff. Others like him were inside, their indigo eyes glassy and frightened as they crouched behind large stones. "World with no name," he said to the woman and the girl. Words were difficult, like snatching leaves from the wind. "Red moon filled sky. Indigo run through maze of trees and caves and rivers. Sovereign hunt us on flying beasts. They find us, one by one. Last found fucked for days and days...no rest. Not until soul is crushed and breath is gone."

The woman sighed, her many faces drawn and tired. "English this time, but he's degrading."

"Gee, you think so?" The girl's hands clenched at her short tunic, gathering what little there was of the material to twist in her palms. "It's worse when you can understand him. Damn it!" She blinked against the water in her eyes, squeezed it to the corners where it trickled to her nose. "And we were so close, almost there. We did the laser thing, and everything. If we're rescued, I'm having my father blow this fucking island up."

In the Dirty Hall world he looked at the ceiling and drew a long breath. The ceiling changed from stained glass, to marble, to stone, to wood, then to stars that twinkled and died. In the Dream world, in that grimy cave, someone grasped his hand. In the shadows, someone was crying.

"He'll get though this, he will...he has to," the woman said, though more to herself than to the girl. The woman's aura shifted with uncertainty, then with doubt. She paused there in the hall, silent and still. Her aura wavered as she seemed to reflect on her troubled emotions, and then analyze them. This went on for only a moment, but the girl shifted in impatience. Behind the walls, pipes grumbled and moaned. Somewhere, water dripped the same word over and over.

When the woman slid her device back in its holder and withdrew her weapon, her aura became a pool of blue glass, sunlight trapped under the surface. "I think it's time for some tough decisions, Ms. Graham. I can't string you along anymore."

"What are you talking about?" the girl asked. She feigned innocence, but her aura barred its teeth, fur rising. Her eyes were on the gun the woman held in her hands. "Does this have something to do with that little silver case you keep toting around? And why the hell are you pointing that thing at me?"

"To give you motivation. I've tried everything to encourage you to save yourself. Being nice isn't working, being a bitch isn't working, because where Leon is concerned, your sense of self-preservation is practically non-existent. This won't do. I'm sorry, but now I'm forcing you to take these keys. Take them and leave."

"You bitch. Who do you work for?" The vehemence in the girl's voice made him pay attention. He gazed at her, his vision blurring the details of her face except her eyes. They burned fierce, almost feverish. He knew many like her, cornered souls, betrayed by the ones they trusted or loved. The Sovereign conquered worlds, entire races, son against father, lover against lover, all the little ones sick and dying, and for what?

 _Perfection,_ echoed many Sovereign in one voice. _We will reclaim what we have lost. It is our right. We will not be judged by a dead god._

"Well that depends, dear, on who pays me the most," the woman said. She smiled, but her eyes held no mirth. "Which is why I'm 'toting' this little silver case here. My mission was to gather specimens of the Los Plagas, but that was only part of the deal. The other, is no witnesses alive. One of my employers sees you as expendable, the other would rather not deal with questions regarding your survival, and his involvement. Two very ambitious men with very little morals, and both on their way here this very moment. So you see, Ms. Graham, it would make things easier for everyone if you took the keys from me, and slipped away."

"Won't these mysterious men punish you for not killing me?"

"I couldn't help if I was distracted. Leon's quite a handful." They looked at him then, the woman and the girl, each with their own version of pity. The island burned brighter in his mind, and in that sea he still swam toward it, never reaching it, the stench of the dead deep in his lungs, poisoning him. Faces in the water. He stared at them with yearning; he would join them if he could.

"I don't want to leave him," said the girl, her voice wet and sulky. "It's not right. He came here because of me, he's all messed up because of me—"

"It's his job. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Take the keys."

"I don't want to!"

"Ashley, take them."

"No!"

"I've shot people for less. Take the keys. Now. I won't ask you again."

The girl started crying. She managed to sniffle a weak, "You bitch" before yanking the keys out of the woman's hand. The hand holding the gun didn't waver until the girl clipped the keys to a loop on her strange tunic. The fuzzy brown animal attached to the silver ring hung upside down. When she moved, it swung, beaded eyes glaring at him.

"And take Leon's PDA, he won't be needing it," said the woman, her voice soothing, a mother praising her obedient child. "Once you get far enough from the island, call for help. Leon's contact, Hunnigan, will send someone asap. Tell them anything you want about what happened here, it won't matter. Leon and I will be long gone before your father can send anyone."

A familiar chuckle rasped from the dark. "So optimistic, my dear. And for so little reason," said a voice that cleared the fog from his mind, sent his heart pounding into his throat. "There's nowhere left to run."

Instinct and choking terror ripped his wings free, the motion little more than a blur. The woman raised her weapon and pivoted in one sinuous movement; the girl bleated, pressed herself against the wall.

The Sovereign stepped out from his hiding place, the covered lump of ancient medical equipment creaking with his exit. His staff unfurled a greeting, but no wisp or flicker of his aura snakes. He should have felt the Sovereign's eyes, should have smelled his stench, should have heard the rustle of his robes. But he had been swimming too long, too hard; his ocean had dulled his senses.

Ganado came from doors and shadows, silent despite their numbers. He tried to count them, but they all looked the same. They approached the Sovereign with slack faces, greed in their eyes, weapons of every kind grasped tight in their hands. A group gathered on the other side of the hall, blocking the chance for escape. No auras, no light, no hint of life.

"You tucked them away," he said. The words bubbled in his head like sea foam, slippery and soft. They spilled from his lips in the wrong order, the wrong meaning. He tried again. "You made them nothing, how?"

"It's been many years. My power has grown since we last saw one another." The Sovereign's voice rolled through the air like a wind full of black spores and rotting leaves; the taste of it sent his stomach into a trembling roil. He felt his strength draining from him, the ocean stealing it, drinking it dry. His wings shook, the delicate bones clinking.

The Sovereign held his hand up. "Stay," he said to the ganado. "Don't attack unless I command it." He set his staff aside and came forward, palms out, empty hands. False surrender. Worms of lust crawled beneath his skin, they twisted, burrowed to the surface. They wanted to touch him. The Sovereign's brows furrowed, false concern, false empathy, no one but a fool would trust it. "Leon, listen to me—"

"No near! Stay rooted!"

The Sovereign's gaze narrowed, the eyes within the eyes regarding him. His lips pursed, the ganado waited, their excitement radiating like sour heat. The Sovereign slid his gaze to the woman, his lip curling. "His condition is your doing. Running through my halls like blind rats, following that silly device you carry. Why do you think he can't even speak his name?"

"Pointing fingers, Saddler?" said the woman, her aura swishing like a cat's tail. "Shame on you. You're the one who started this. If you had left Ashley alone, none of us would be running though your halls. Leon would have been fine."

The Sovereign waved his hand as if swatting bothersome flies. "You are in my house, I know every crevice and cave, and have been long aware of where you intended to escape. The irony is that I've been waiting for _you._ Been here for quite some time, listening to you manipulate that girl, and fret over what to do, what to do – it amused me at first, but soon he will be beyond my help. I won't let him become like the others, not after waiting centuries for a suitable host."

"If you were listening, you would have heard me say he's stronger than he looks," said the woman. "I know him, he's gone through worse than this."

He saw the woman in two places: The Dirty Hall world, standing defiant, challenging the Sovereign; the other, his island, her hair blowing in the wind, her hands held out in invitation. When had she arrived there? Did she come from the city? The ocean? What did she mean to him, to this host?

"There is a reason the Indigo must be bound to us, we provide stability, rationality—"

"I think he's proven that he's more than capable of dealing with you. I distinctly remember those bone blades of his under your chin at one point. You may have jumbled his brains, but he'll snap out of it. You're assuming the worst for no reason," the woman said.

"And you assume the best because you are a fool."

"Please, sir," said the girl. Her aura hugged her body as if consoling her. "uh...por favor, please just let us leave. We didn't do anything to you, not at first." She hesitated, gathered herself. Tears ran unchecked down her face. So many others pleaded the same. Entire worlds. An endless sea of faces, tears the Sovereign granted no mercy. "Leon's only here for me. It's not his fault. We'll leave and won't bother you again. We won't tell, we—"

"Hush." The Sovereign put a finger to his lips. Something close to regret simmered in his eyes. His words came slow, thoughtful. "I never had a quarrel with you, girl. You were a means to an end that no longer appeals to me. This woman was correct in saying my priorities have changed. And they have, considerably, and for reasons I could not possibly convey in this limited language of yours. However..." He gave a heavy sigh and drew back on his heels, a weary judge deciding his prisoner's fate. "I am not without compassion. Your death will be swift."

"What kind of bastard are you?" The woman aimed her gun between the Sovereign's eyes, her own flaring with rage. The girl broke down in sobs and covered her face with her hands. _Never show emotion, never let them get to you,_ a coward whispered in his mind, a man who fled his own demons and lived in a castle of white. The girl called him Father. The woman's glass aura shattered, spitting gold and flecks of blue. "If you don't need her, let her walk away."

"It would have been easier, and kinder, for you to have shot her when you had the chance. There's still time to rectify this, if you'd like. I won't interfere," said the Sovereign.

"Sorry, your grace, the only one kissing bullets will be you," said the woman. To the girl, she said, "Ashley, I won't hurt you, and I won't let him either, I promise."

In his Dream world, she kept shining there on the shore, beckoning to him. He wanted to reach her, but he didn't know which woman was real. The girl huddled against the wall, fingers outstretched, white upon the gray. She didn't look at the woman, or at the Sovereign. She looked at him, the naked desperation on her face pulling his mind together again, chasing away the Dream world and the island from his thoughts.

"Leon, please come back," she said, a child praying for a miracle. It brought back the many nights he, and every host before him, spent begging on knees for absolution. Prayers that went unanswered, ignored. "Make him stop, please. Make him go away. I don't want to die. I want to go home, I just want to go home."

"Even if he were to suddenly come to his senses," the Sovereign said. "He can't kill us all. What you see in this hall is a mere fraction of what awaits behind every door, in every room. There is no chance, Ms. Graham. For any of you. Face your end with dignity." He said the last not unkindly, but with the gentle scolding of a father. "Death is a release from fear, from pain. You should embrace it."

"Let's see if you take your own advice, Saddler," said the woman. Her finger tightened on the trigger, the Sovereign smiled. He held his arms out, his brows lifting in wry amusement.

"Ah, it's been a while since we've had sport," he said. "Particularly with females. Do what you want, my flock, but kill them in the end. The Indigo, of course, is mine."

The swimmer inside his mind stopped; the Dirty Hall world commanded his full attention. It became a world of motion and sound. The hall shifted around his enemy, a castle corridor, a black stone cave, a forest path strangled by trees, a cramped vale between two towering cliffs. Angry at his spurning, the ocean in his mind churned, the voices under the waves shrieked. He told them to be patient, he would return to them soon; remember or die, they would decide his fate in the end.

His wings tilted, changed direction. One pointed toward the crowd of ganado that began to advance, the other toward the Sovereign whose robes had begun to move below his waist. Tentacles rushed at him, wove around the mob of ganado, and darted at his legs. He severed them with one wing and cleaved two springing ganado in half with the other.

The girl squeaked and ducked behind the feathered blades. She pressed against one of the locked doors, her hand tugging the handle in panic. Orange light flashed to his right, the barrel of the woman's weapon sparking with each shot. Three fell. More came. The ganado pressed against them on all sides, their eyes burning ash, their smell, overwhelming, their cries of bloodlust, deafening. He realized it didn't matter how powerful the woman's tiny gun was, or how adept her skills, she would eventually miss, run out of bullets, run out of luck. He would soon tire, or the Sovereign would release the bane—and then no amount of strength, or luck would help him.

The woman held the key. In the Dirty Hall world, she stood at his side, but as a pale shade, insubstantial. In his Dream world, she glowed on that island, her dress rippling with the wind, fire against fire. The choice was his: remember, or sink into the waters forever. One path promised more heartache and pain, the other, the confusing oblivion of madness.

Two more ganado spilled their insides on the floor, their bodies falling, creating enough space for him to rush forward.

The woman cried out when he reached for her, struggled when he pinned her arms behind her back, moaned when his mouth covered hers, bucked when his aura strained against her own. Blue invaded by violet, his captive now. The girl called his name as she fended off grasping hands, but she too, fell away. The Dirty Hall world crumbled, and he plunged into his dream self, the eternal swimmer. He surfaced, the sky above an angry red, the ocean a vicious purple. Time didn't exist here, one moment could carry on forever if he so desired. It all depended on _her_.

The woman was ahead of him, cutting through the water at a frantic pace. Her thoughts fluttered to him, light as bird wings. _Mother said never to play in water I couldn't see the bottom, never swim so deep I couldn't find my way back._ He followed, the island for once not drifting away, but coming closer, closer still. He swam faster. The woman staggered to her feet, her butterfly dress clinging to her body, baring one leg to the hip as she crawled onto the beach, sputtering and coughing and crying.

His feet brushed against sand, and he rejoiced. He fell to his knees, stumbled forward until he collapsed. The urge to gather the sand into his arms was so powerful, so hard to resist. Real, real, real, this was real. But the woman was running from him, her thoughts a whirling storm of dark leaves, wet and shivering. _Not again, not again, please. I want to forget this place, forget it ever happened, forget my part._

He chased her into the city, the streets a mess of ruined vehicles, some floating in the air, fire from their mouths licking the red sky. One path, the woman ran, towering structures of rusty metal blocking all others, corpses dangling like dead birds inside cages. Papers and debris fell like jagged snowflakes, blew over the ground, drifted into corners, piled high as if they meant to climb the walls. Shadows moaned, lurched on broken legs, grasped with skeleton fingers. Blood rained, puddles splashing when he disturbed their solemn reflections. The woman ran on, aware he was closing the distance, aware her strength was failing, aware her body was tiring.

Her path narrowed, then stopped. A wall of dead refused her passage, heaps of contorted bodies aglow from the fires, empty eyes staring, accusing. Layers and layers of them, stacked against the flood of tears and regret that the woman poured from her soul. _Let me through! I couldn't do anything, couldn't help you, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please, don't let him catch me!_

The tips of her dark hair kissed his fingers, then embraced them, his hand tight against her scalp, her flesh hot and damp from the sea. She lost her balance, her hands clawing at his arms, at his face. But she couldn't hurt him, not here. Her mouth opened in a scream, and he claimed it again. A kiss within a kiss. Memories within a dream. A sudden burst of understanding, her knowledge became his.

The city, fire, ruins, _Raccoon_ ; dead men, feeding, groaning, _T virus_ ; a young woman, red hair, pink vest, _Claire Redfield_ ; a blond child, scared eyes, golden locket, _Sherry Birkin_ ; her father, enemy, monster, _William Birkin._

Then he was lost, alone. No Sherry, no Claire. This is when he met her, the woman. Inside a stone place, vehicles parked between yellow lines, a shot fired and missed. He flinched, then turned. She wore red then, too, her dark hair shining. My name is Ada Wong.

 _But that's not your real name, is it?_ His mind pressed into hers, eager for more memories, more answers. He almost had himself, almost had his name.

_Don't make me remember, I promised her I wouldn't forget, but I lied, I lied. I hate her. I ruin everything I touch, just like her. My mother. I don't want to remember!_

_Then show me myself. Make me whole again._

_You won't like what you see._ She sighed, weariness in her voice. _I hurt you. I...left you. I leave everyone._

_But you can't leave. Not until I say. And I won't let you go until you show me._

_Alright, but promise you'll forgive me. Promise me, Leon._

He paused, giving her words the consideration they deserved. _I promise._

Like a reluctant girl handing over the sweets she had stolen, she showed him the rest, her horror, her fear, her betrayal. He lingered on those images, the wound she had tended on his shoulder, and then her wounds he had bandaged later with loving care; a laboratory, red and white emblems on the walls. Umbrella; they were the cause, the reason for everything. Raccoon's murderer.

A bald monster threw her into steel, made her sleep, sleep so deep he thought she was dead. But she awoke after he had left, made her slow, painful escape from the lab, met a man she called Contact in a building named after a fruit. Contact slouched in a chair, gun hanging from his hand, his head an explosion of gore. Albert Wesker gave Contact a new name. Coward.

Albert Wesker, the blond man he had seen on her small device; the man with the red eyes, the flaming aura. In this room, he smiled on a bigger screen, taunted her with death until she showed him a glass tube, purple liquid twisting inside smaller tubes. He leaned forward, gloved fingers on his chin. It is in our best interest that you survive, he said. The G-virus is required.

The G-virus and the T-virus, makers of monsters; the other variants of these, each one worse than the last, forming a black sphere of destruction that kept spinning, spinning, and would never stop. Humans, playing with toys that bit and stung. They cried, they bled, but they never threw their playthings away.

 _Yes, we are fools, aren't we? Saddler was right in saying that. But some of us are better, stronger. There's a reason I fell in love with you, Leon._ Ada's voice filled his mind, her words a path to the light, to reality. _You do the right thing. You always have. Come back, I need you...the world needs you._

His eyes sprang open, his sense of self popping back into place with no more effort than a gentle nudge, a soft breath.

Leon...his name was Leon...Leon Scott Kennedy.

And he was in deep shit.

He threw himself and Ada against the wall, his wings shredding a ganado unlucky enough to be in his way, and skewering another by accident when he yanked free from the first. He had razor noodles on his back, none of them would go where he wanted. Ada sagged in his grip, breathing hard, her aura a bunch of drunken arms waving, but still vibrant, still aware. He hadn't fed on her, hadn't had the time, or perhaps he hadn't even thought about feeding. Either way, if he didn't get these stupid appendages under control he would kill them both.

"Leon! Leon, help me!" Ashley held Ada's gun in her hands, the gun shaking more than she was. A lone, frightened girl somehow keeping the horde of ganado away. They could've rushed her, a few of their number falling to the remaining bullets left in Ada's five-seveN—if Ashley even managed to aim it correctly, but they kept their distance. Their expressions flitted from laughing to growling, their auras lighting the hall like vapor from a witch's cauldron. He didn't remember them smelling this bad when he had been crazy.

He pulled his wings close, winced when one bony edge scraped his arm. "Ashley, where's Saddler? Where did he go?" he asked. Ada shook her head, untangled herself from his body, swayed like a flower stalk ready to break.

"Leon? You remember? You remember me?" The joy on Ashley's face brought a smile to his, She turned toward him, a thousand words of relief ready to spill from her lips, her arms ready to wrap around him, her legs ready to run to him. But in that moment he knew she had forgotten his question, the question she should have answered instead of lowering the gun, lowering her guard.

She forgot to answer the question.

The radiant grin she wore froze on her face, her brows coming together in puzzlement. She opened her mouth, blood poured out. Ada's gun clattered to the floor, the metal shining a bright, garish, red. He couldn't watch this happen, but his eyes wouldn't close, his body wouldn't move. Saddler's resigned sigh sounded like a dagger falling, the tip piercing him as it pierced Ashely.

_I am not without compassion, your death will be swift._

She dangled, suspended by the bulging tentacle lodged in her torso. Saddler stood several feet away, calm, stoic, the folds of his robes parting to make way for death. The ganado gawked at her, enrapt, awed, as if this bloody angel would somehow bless them, forgive them for their sins. Ada made a strangled noise behind him, her aura recoiling with horror, her promise dying before her eyes. _  
_

She'd be alright. His thoughts fled like bees from a burning nest. She'd be alright, she'd be alright as long as Saddler pulled out clean. If he pulled out clean she had a chance—not a great one, but better than—

Ashley's right breast exploded in red as another blade burst through, the tip wedged tight between her ribs. She jerked in the air, her body arching as if caught in the throes of macabre passion. Her eyes met his, one iris wreathed in blood, the other already glazing over. "L-L-" she tried to say and gave one, delicate shudder. Her hands went limp, her body next.

Saddler's tentacles ripped free with a wet, crunching sound. Ashley dropped to the floor.

The hall went silent. No one moved. Ashley's aura flowed over her body, a golden ghost, no trace of blue. He sensed its uncertainty, its confusion. Then it rose, a gossamer bird instead of a ghost, hovering there, staring at him. He stared back, rooted to spot, frozen as Ashley's last smile. Maybe he could force it back inside her, lock it in. Could he do such a thing? Was it even possible?

This question would never have an answer. Not now. With a slow nod of its head, the aura bird broke its eyeless gaze, and flew through the ceiling on graceful wings, its tail wisping out in a glittering puff. Gone. Ashley Graham was gone. Gone because of his weakness, his stupidity, his tendency for getting himself into the worst possible situation with the worst possible outcome.

"Come vengeance," Saddler said, the shadows swallowing him in his retreat. The ganado vanished, but their egress went unnoticed and unchallenged. In these terrible moments, all he could see was Ashley's blood spreading on the floor, over her lips, oozing from the ruins of one breast, the other still soft and white. Unspoiled. His fingers twitched; he should close her sweater.

"Deal your punishment." Saddler's aura surged to life, every ugly snake mocking him. "Kill me for what I've done."

"No! Leon, he's baiting you!" Ada reached for him, yelped when she slipped in Ashley's blood and fell. He had never seen Ada's face so pale, her eyes so wide; not even when he chased her through la la dream land. She braced herself against the wall, slipped a second time. Her dress tore, butterflies lost their wings. "Leon, don't go, we have a way out! We keep running, we keep going, we don't stop. Wesker said three hours, but that means two! Don't you understand? Early, he's always _early_!"

He understood, he understood perfectly. Be a sensible boy, turn around, go with Ada, escape. But nothing resembling sense motivated him now. The primal urge for revenge, to punish, to kill drove him into the darkness, bone wings tucked in, halls bleeding into one another. Behind him, with her dress bloody and aura wild, Ada screamed his name with such desperation that he almost turned around.

Almost.


	7. Sins of the First

- **Chapter 7: Sins of the First** -

Deserted hallways, one after another. Some were clogged with construction equipment, rusty medical carts, and even one wheelchair, its seat serving as storage for a teetering pile of old folders. He had no idea where he was going, where he was, or how far underground Ada had led him and Ashley during her search for an escape. Pure instinct guided him, the sound of Saddler's footfalls, the glimpses of that blood-black aura.

His awareness had sharpened to the point where he could split himself between the physical and mental planes of consciousness. He didn't contemplate how he could do it. He just did it. Like Dumbo realizing he never needed the feather in the first place; he could have flown anytime.

In his mind, every host, their life, their experiences manifested as books inside a massive library. Walls upon walls of them, disorganized stacks on the verge of toppling over. All he had to do was think "torture", and books floated into his hands, binders dusty, ancient pages, and inside, ways to kill a Sovereign in the most brutal, bloody manner imaginable. He should have blanched at the horrific details, but he studied them, memorized them, every method, every design.

 _An eye for an eye_ , one book whispered, its pages so old and worn he was afraid they would disintegrate in his hands. _Let no desire go unfulfilled, let no wrong go unpunished. If the law is broken, let the grievance decide the consequence; if the slight is personal, let the offended decide the price._

An eye for an eye it was. For his police escorts, for Ashley, Luis, Mike, all the villagers, their children. The dead would find justice. Ada thought he had lost his reason, all his marbles spilling out of the bag, bouncing to the floor, rolling under the furniture. But he would be a careful crazy man, one prepared for anything.

He paused to catch his breath, researching what he could in the little time he had to rest. On the highest shelf, someone had slapped two slabs of stone together around the biggest dictionary he had ever seen. The book glimmered with invitation. What life did it contain? Someone who lived quite a while from the looks of it, someone who maybe knew how to defeat Saddler better than the others.

A rickety ladder appeared at his whim, its rungs made of bone and twine. His mind was fun like that. For some reason the book wouldn't come when he commanded. Too heavy, maybe. There was something odd about it besides the age, and the fact it was stone. He paused when he reached the top shelf, wary for no reason. What was he afraid of? The damn thing wasn't going to bite him.

Dust puffed around the book as if someone was breathing on it. The binding was cracked along the edges, chipped in the corners. Its pages were red. He couldn't remember if they had been red before. Whispers stirred when he began to reach for it, warnings, mutterings that seemed born from the shadows themselves. He paused, uncertain. The yapping choir annoyed the hell out of him, but they were no threat.

His fingers brushed the cold stone, flakes of gray sticking to his skin. Darkness swirled, his only warning before two floating hands clamped down over his. He cried out, pinwheeling on the ladder for a good horrifying minute before regaining his balance.

The hands, so pale he could see the delicate veins in the wrists, snatched the book and dragged it out of sight. A voice spoke, the timber and tone genderless, but stern. _These pages contain only suffering, regret. Seek your answers elsewhere._

"Telgren? Is that you?" His voice echoed when it shouldn't have. The library had expanded without him willing it, growing more books, more shelves, more complex isles. Dark shapes appeared out of the corner of his eye. Nothing answered him, but there was movement all around him. From below, something touched the ladder, sent a shiver of vibration spiraling upward. He craned his head to see what it was, but a mist pooled around the floor. Something else unwanted. His control was slipping. The voice spoke again, a General fed up with his meandering soldier.

_Tarry here no longer. Kill the Sovereign._

He opened his eyes, let out a whoosh of breath he hadn't realized he had been holding. It was bad when his mind was scarier than reality. Those weren't Telgren's hands. After Telgren had committed suicide via butterfly bomb, the shrapnel had turned his own brain to mush. His mind he had reclaimed (for the most part), but Telgren was indefinitely MIA. What host was he dealing with now?

The voice jabbed him in the temples, a persistent poke that grew louder and meaner the longer he idled. The General was pissed now, downright enraged. _Go, kill the Sovereign. Kill him, kill him, kill him, kill—_

He ran. The voice dimmed, but it was still there, chanting beneath his consciousness. He was a dog running away from his tail on fire. He couldn't escape it. Something had been left behind of the plaga, or remnant, or Telgren...or something else. It felt malevolent, powerful, using his mind and body as a shield for itself. Terror urged his run into a full-out sprint. What the fuck was inside him?

Nothing opposed his wild canter through the corridors except a lone Regenerator that staggered back with a startled baby cry when he sped past. As if dropped by Hansel and Gretal themselves, the wake of Saddler's aura clung to the walls, became shiny bread crumbs to follow. All he needed now was a picnic basket and some suspenders.

Ahead, and somewhere to his left, a door slammed, the barest scent of blood, fading footsteps. The voice kept chanting. He vaulted up a set of stairs, entered another hallway without a ganado in sight. Too easy. Obvious trap. But that did not stop him from yanking open the only door at the end, yelping when his hand slipped free, dripping in—

 _Oh shit...Oh God_...he stared at his hand, his breath expelling in a wheeze. Already the warmth was spreading through his fingers, up his wrist, his nerves tingling with heightened awareness, sensitivity. He wiped it off on his pants, frantic, angry gestures that brought agony and pleasure. He broke out in a sweat. To the hollow of his elbow now, and still spreading. White flesh, then pink, then red. Nerves on fire, heat licking his skin, needy, wanting. How could he have been so stupid?

He stumbled back, his quest for revenge waylaid by toxic slime. The books in his library knew it by another name, but saying it—even thinking it—might make the bane spread. His shoulder throbbed, the red trail snaking around the bone, his nerves singing, coming alive.

"Did you think I would play fair?" Saddler chuckled behind the offending door. "Not take advantage of your reckless nature, your temper?"

He ignored the urge to cradle his arm. As crappy as this situation had become, at least the bane had shut up the voice. He couldn't even picture his library now. No pale hands in the dark. "Pretty underhanded, even for you, old man," he said when the door opened and the edges of Saddler's aura curled into view. Snakes tasted the air, searching for him. The bottom folds of Saddler's robes left snail trails of glistening goo.

"I'm practical," Saddler said. "And patient. All I have to do is wait until the ichor reaches your heart, then we can cease these game. And don't try anything foolish as others before you have done, like sever the affected limb. I'm prepared to intervene if necessary."

"Come a little closer then, I'm feeling suicidal."

"Yes, I'm sure. Your poor little charge. I assure you, I took no joy in her death," A ring of frost circled the pupils of Saddler's eyes, his frown both pensive and resigned. "What I did was necessary."

"You did it out of spite, you did it to hurt me, to bait me." He managed to keep the tremble out of his voice, but not his hand. Nerves stretched beneath his skin, squirmed for more simulation. What he would do for an "off" switch right now, some level to pull, little red button to push. Break in case of emergency. He tried summoning the images of such things, but they formed and vanished before he could use them.

"And you? Did you not kill my best men? Bitores? Salazar? Did you not destroy hundreds of my ganado? You even took pleasure in their demise—"

"Are you seriously comparing me to you? I was defending myself, protecting Ashely. Your little cows would still be mooing if you hadn't taken her in the first—"

"No." Saddler's snakes writhed as if hypnotized by an angry charmer. "Krauser delivered her to me. He, and the female spy are dogs of that red-eyed fool, Albert Wesker. I hope dear Albert realizes his bitch likes to roam. Serves the master who throws her the best treats."

"We're not talking about Ada, we're talking about you, killing Ashley. Tearing her up like...like—" Tongues, warm and silky swirled around his shoulder, the line of poison sighing there before moving on. Library and angry General still a no show. No help there. His pulse doubled, pumped more tainted blood to the rest of this body. His groin strained, begged for freedom. His hand moved, curled on his thigh. Saddler followed the motion with one eyebrow raised, his face darkening. Aura snakes slowed their sempiternal dance, watched with black eyes, flicked red tongues.

"The ichor is our natural defense against you, despite your protests to the contrary," said Saddler. Familiar yearning unwound in his voice, wrapped his words in downy gauze. "The Indigo submit so easily to its effects, a roaring lion reduced to a purring kitten. Unfair and unsporting, but it serves its purpose."

Leon made one bony tendril cleave the air, the hiss bringing clarity like ice down his parched throat. "Stop it! Just stop," he panted. The ichor ate him one piece at a time, his skin soft and ripe in its jaws. The hall blurred behind Saddler, a desert mirage of gray and white. He had to stay focused, stay sane. Keep talking."I'm your enemy! _En-nah-mee._ Got it? Yeah, I tore through a whole bunch of you ugly bastards...your star soldier boys, Big Cheese Man, Grandpa Midget...and yeah, I enjoyed it. Just like you enjoyed murdering an innocent girl. Don't say you're sorry. You're not sorry. No more than I am."

"I should hate you then—"

"Yes! Hate me! Because if you throw one more lovesick glance my way, I'm going to spew all over your shoes!"

Saddler canted his head, stroked his chin with his thumb. "Should I hate the sea then, when her waves spill over the shoreline, drowning all within her path? When a storm devastates the land, wind uprooting trees, should I rage against it? Should I curse the snow for falling, the desert for burning, the volcano for erupting? Nature is nature. Deadly, yes, but it holds no malice."

"I hold lots of malice...oodles and oodles of it."

"Yes, but that is your nature."

The desert mirage behind Saddler changed colors. Purple, reds, some yellows, a magic kingdom of pastel blobs. "Never mind. No more Momma Nature, okay? How about we...discuss how many new holes I'm going to put in your...ugly face. How many limbs can I chop off...before you, before you croak."

"We both know that won't happen. You're already slurring your words. Movements are turning sluggish. Good. While I may not take personal offense to your mindless slaughter of my servants, I will curb your destructive impulses. I will harness you, tame you."

"Call me Black Beauty...take me for a ride." He laughed, his muscles twitching under his skin as if they got the joke. "You know how many times you've said you'll...'tame me'? I ought to make a drinking game of it."

"Yes, I know how many times. As many times as you've claimed I will not succeed, as many times as you've vowed to take my life. I have told you, this is an old song between us."

"Then stop singing...old man...'cause you suck."

"Interesting choice of words."

"Don't...get excited. Take one fucking...step...over here, and...and—" The rest of what he wanted to say flew right out of his head. He forgot where he was, what he had been doing, saying. The torn parts of his shirt weren't wide enough; the air couldn't reach his skin. He was a moth inside a glass jar, no holes in the lid. He swayed to the side, on fire, unable to breathe, the pulse in his ears, deafening.

The hand against his cheek, rough and cool, startled him. Saddler, inches away, his snakes nuzzling before they swallowed him whole. How did the bastard get this close without him noticing? His wings jerked from their drooping stance, slow, heavy, like petrified bones.

"Stop. You'll waste precious energy fighting me, fighting fate."

"I don't believe...in fate."

"The irony of that statement, the innocence is endearing. What would I give to start fresh every time I took a new host, to paint the colors of past horrors paler and paler." Dry lips brushed his neck, his head tilting back on instinct. Disgust followed, then shame. Warmth and wetness climbed his legs, affectionate vines eager to share their poison. His heart lurched, his knees buckled, but he did not touch the floor. Saddler's arms supported him, aided by the other appendages that crawled from beneath his robe.

He closed his eyes and pounded on the door to his library, each strike ringing hollow. No one home. Creepy voice still bye bye. He tried to remember the words of each book, but the words flowed together, smearing under golden oil. Ichor, the Indigo's bane, the Sovereign's salvation.

Saddler said something in his ear, a breathy promise. His body reacted, a groan wrung past his lips. He raised his hands and tendrils wrapped around them, fluid oozing over his fingers, sweet and bitter smelling. "I want to savor this," Saddler murmured against his throat. His wings shivered, blades like wind chimes when Saddler's hands caressed where the bones protruded from his shoulders. "It doesn't matter how many times we cross this path, the thrill of conquest never diminishes. You are my enemy, my lover. You carry part of my soul and I carry a part of yours. This binding is only a formality. A renewing of vows spoken long ago."

His clothes, soaked through and dripping, hit the concrete with a slap. The sensation of his exposed body against hot slippery flesh drove all sense from him. His groans, his thrusting seemed far away, an erotic scene from someone else's dream. The sanity he had eked out from a jumble of hallucinations and a swim in an illusionary ocean all but crumbled into nothing. Even if he stumbled into his library now, all the books would be floating, words drowning in golden goo. And he was drowning, Saddler's aura crashing into him, an ocean full of serpents pulling him down into darkness.

He didn't even feel the kiss when it descended, too high on sensations beyond pleasure, his body drinking in the bane, muscles and tendons pulsing, his bare legs gripping a lover no longer human. He rocked against this creature, slow at first, then faster, faster still. He ached, begged for more, and took what it offered without hesitation. No more shame. No more guilt. This horrible empty feeling inside filled with flesh, blood, and pleasure. Ashley, her doll eyes and slight, white body on the floor. That had happened so long ago, to someone else. Maybe it hadn't happened at all.

 _That's right,_ said Saddler, sliding what served currently as his hands under his ass, crushing him even closer. _Don't think of it. A trifle thing._

A soft mist plumed, sweet smelling as a pollen cloud. Then it cleared. A familiar field, a familiar house, a porch swing with a small wooden table beside it. A glass of lemonade half full. Or half empty. What sort of person was he?

His father sat on the swing, pushing it with his boot, the hinges protesting with sad, whining squeaks. Clad in his dark blue uniform, a gold star on his shoulder: _Sheriff Dept., Whitmore County,_ no hat, no gun on his belt. "Heya, where'd you scamper off? Been waiting for you, silly rabbit. We were just getting started."

"I had to find my island. Ada helped me."

His father nodded, winced a little when he took a sip of lemonade. The cut on his lip, a thin trickle of blood. His father wiped the red away, smiling.

Crickets filled the silence with trilling wings, the sunset a smudge of russet behind the trees. Stars already dotted the sky, winking good evening from across the universe. He frowned. The Big Dipper was missing.

A weathered hand patted the seat, thick callused fingers, short bones. He had his mother's hands, long, tapered, the kind meant for art, or music, not for the steel of weapons, the smear of blood stains. "Hop on, we were going to India, remember? See Bull Temple, the Taj Mahal."

"I'm too old for that game." But he sat down anyway, the swing creaking another melancholy sigh. He scanned the heavens. Pisces had swum away, frightened by an old toad that squatted on a lilypad made of thin violet clouds.

"You're still angry about what happened aren't you? I'm sorry, Scott. I did what I had to. She was in trouble." Under his father's eyes, bruises bled there, an invisible artist deciding to add a bit of purple, a little more black. The cut at the corner of his lip deepened, the trickle of blood curved over his chin.

_Daddy, I want to be a po-leece man like you._

"You didn't have to do anything," he said, the memories surging like the overflow of filthy water, the sudden chance to say the things he had been wanting to say all these years. "You shouldn't have gone over there. What made that time so different? Chuck and Denise, stupid white trash, those stupid beer can wind chimes on their front porch. They always fought, everyone knew it, everyone always ignored them."

His father shrugged, a sharp movement, the bones grinding as if pulled out of their sockets. "What have I've always said? Gotta love them at their worst."

"You weren't even on duty!"

"The badge never comes off, Scott. It stays for life. Right here." His father thumped his chest with blood coated fingers, the bottom of his uniform pocket filling with life ink. Blue to sticky purple.

"Mom said you couldn't stop. Like a broken faucet. Had to be the hero all the damn time. Denise didn't deserve it. She could've left him and never did." His fists clenched his knees, fury welling up, biting at his eyes. The crickets held their breath, the sun slipped out of the sky to avoid the sudden tension. The stars shifted position, glittering bright, attentive. Wrong constellations. All of them. Scorpio scuttled under a rock, leaving behind a spider spinning a web out of pink dust. Spiders. The butterfly lost. In the dark place between the house and the shed, hungry arachnids sucked a delicate carcass dry. Bad luck, bad timing. The butterfly had taken a wrong turn in the wind, or perhaps the wind had gotten sick of carrying it.

"She would have died, Scott. A rabid dog had better sense than Chuck. Better control. Denise was damn lucky I'd been home. Heard her screaming clear across the field. Like you said, no one else would have gone, no one else cared enough."

"You could have called a unit over, they would've taken care of it—"

"And right after I hung up with them, I would have had to call the coroner."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do. You weren't there. You didn't see what he had done to her. To her face. Never was a pretty girl to begin with, but the way he busted her up—" His father sighed, took another sip of lemonade. Red flowed into the glass like swathes of dye. "Not even her own mother would have recognized her."

"You're wrong. I was there. I was the one who found you. Denise never called the cops. She didn't do anything but sit there in the corner pissing herself and crying. I would have killed her myself if I hadn't seen you on the kitchen floor, your head—" He wiped his eyes and looked at the line of trees dividing the sky from the woods. The breeze blew the dandelions bald, little tufts of white on the grass. "I sat in your blood, and held the back of your head together. It didn't matter that you were dead. You were still bleeding. I thought I could stop it. I thought about mom. Who would kiss her like you, love her like you? Who would help Leslie with math? Who would walk her down the isle when she got married? What would happen to us? Our entire world ended because you had to be a hero. And they never caught Chuck. The bad guy got away, Dad."

"But she was screaming. How could I not go? What kind of man would that make me? She would be dead if I hadn't intervened. You understand why. It was the right thing to do."

"She should be dead. Better her than you. Sometimes you have to be selfish, choose what you love over duty or what's right."

"You don't mean that."

"I do. And I don't care what you think. You're dead, remember?"

"And you don't mean that either. You're a bad liar, Scott. You've come so far, endured so much. You honor us, your mother and I. We're proud of you."

"Shut up." He put his head in his hands. His father put his arm around him, pulled him close. He smelled blood, tasted the salt of his tears, his lips trembling. "Don't talk anymore. Just be with me."

They could've sat that way for two minutes, or two weeks. He sat with his father, that heavy arm around him, warm across his shoulders, the low tune his father hummed, the creaking of the swing. The comfort he had been denied for fourteen years restored for a few stolen moments. It was enough.

"Look at the stars."

He looked up, his eyes slow to move, his head even slower. The rest of the constellations had leaped away sometime during the sun's escape. Strange creatures wandered into the empty spaces, uncertain with their new surroundings. For a moment they hung there, a flying stag, a beetle, a four-headed snake, then they began to drop from the sky. They fell in torrents, streaks of pink flaring orange for a brief second before the ozone ate them in a flash of light.

"What do you do with a falling star?"

"Catch it in a jar, keep it 'till morning so it can say hello to the sun." He said this as if reciting a nursery rhyme, some little poem he had known all his life. No. Not his life. Not his words. The gentle grip on his shoulder tightened, fingers and hand no longer his father's. The wind turned cold, the creak of the swing turned menacing. He glared at the impostor. "So how long has it been you? Was my father here at all?"

"Your memory of him, for a time," said Saddler. The arm around him stayed, and he wondered if his wings would work in this place. Saddler chuckled beside him, rattling his already tense muscles. "You don't have control of this dream, little one. I guide you now. Remember your library, I want you to see it."

"Why?" He didn't ask how Saddler knew about the library, but it disturbed him. It was _his_ library, even if did have that creepy voice, shadow people, and disembodied hands.

"You don't have the mental discipline to keep me out. And you never will, especially not after the bond."

He bolted from the swing. Saddler remained, his face neutral, robes sweeping dry leaves into the porch cracks. No aura. No way to predict Saddler's actions except by his expression and posture. On the bright side, Saddler looked like Saddler again, choir robes and all. "We are not _bonding,"_ he said. "Right now I'm feeding on you, and we're...doing other things I'd rather not think about. This weird trippy dream is memory Show and Tell. What happened before won't happen again. Ever. Doesn't matter how much you sweet talk or coo in my ear. And by the way, stay out of my library. It's mine. I decide who gets to visit."

Saddler nodded, the gesture eerily similar to his father. "The bond is happening. Right now. Our memories laid bare, or rather, yours are laid bare. I've had practice." He quirked his lips and shrugged in apology. "I had thought you shallow, a fool boy with no regard for anything other than glory. Typical American idiot. I was wrong. I've seen your memories. You...humble me."

"What do you know? He stared at Saddler, his ghost eyes. "You're a parasite. A thing. A goofup of some bored god with no sense of humor. Even if you had the capacity to love, you don't deserve it."

"Because I hurt you—"

"You hurt everyone! Do I need to conjure a big stone wall so you can see every name? I'll even include their families, lovers. Anyone attached to those you've murdered. Maybe then you'd understand. Maybe then the light will pop on inside your wee little brain, and remind you that life isn't something you can snuff out on a whim. People are important. Families are important."

"I had two daughters before the plague," Saddler said. "Secile was four, Mera was seven. I met Rathel, my wife, in a small river town. She was Indigo. Mixing clans was frowned upon even after the war, but I didn't care." Saddler looked at the stars and rocked on the swing. He looked more human than he ever had before, a lonely old man, the frost melting in his eyes. "They were killed by an insane priestess and her disciple, a misguided boy who worshiped her, who thought she was the voice of God. Creator. Maker. Great One. So many names for a deity of hatred." He sighed, ran his thumb over the links of the arm chain. "You say I don't know how to love, I don't know how precious life is. Then prove it. Open that book in your library, the one on the top shelf. The one he won't let you touch."

"I don't know who you're talking about." Against his will, he found himself climbing that ladder again, amazed he could visualize it with such clarity. His yard faded with every beat of his heart, the whispers pushing against him with tiny hands. On that shelf, the ancient stone relic loomed in the shadows, undisturbed. The shadows shifted, a glimpse of pale skin. A lurking shape growled a warning. The General was displeased.

"He's the original. The very first Indigo." A shade of himself, Saddler smiled at the bottom of the ladder, that cold glint in his eye returning. "After the host's death, his soul becomes dominant again. What remains of their memories are his to command. Telgren was a mask he wore. Every voice you have heard, every memory you have experienced are what he _chose_ to show you. He had fooled even me. All this time, I thought I had been dealing with the ghost of my former lover, but after reviewing your memories, I know with certainty who I'm dealing with. I'm almost honored. Something about you must have piqued his interest."

The Indigo recoiled at Saddler's words, but didn't budge from his post. The dark hid his face, but his jawline was defined, his cheeks narrow. His eyes glinted like a feral animal. Only a trace of aura, a purple shimmer outlined his crouching body. If he attempted to touch that book, the Indigo would pounce, maybe take him over. Then it was the return of the pod persona he had fought so hard to get rid of. He couldn't risk that. Not again.

"Ah, he's all fur and no teeth. He can't hurt you, he needs you. You are the host."

"I don't think he cares who I am. Why is he snarling over this overinflated encyclopedia?"

"To keep his crimes secret. To keep his shame hidden. What he began long ago, and her. He cannot bear it."

He reached for the book, grasping the sides. His fingers couldn't even fit around it. The voice soughed in his ear, a General no longer, but a pleading friend. _I keep these memories to protect you. My sin is my burden, not yours._ The Indigo's hands on his, cool, but not icy. The voice so remorseful, so insistent. That made sense. Why should he go poking his nose where it didn't belong?

Saddler's voice in his other ear, a devil perched on his shoulder, whispering. "But you have inherited his legacy, his failings. If I am to punish you for his sins, you should know his transgressions."

His hands tightened on the book, and the Indigo's hands tightened on his. "You'll punish me for something I didn't do?"

"You are both innocent and guilty. But even if the First had not betrayed us, you have killed many of my kind. Yes. I will punish you."

_See? See how twisted his justice is? Heathen. Vile abomination. They are a blight we will snuff out no matter how many hosts they take. They cannot escape our Creator's wrath, His judgment!_

He had enough of this creature yanking his emotions around like chains attached to disobedient dogs. Enough games, enough of the lies. "Let go," he said. The owner of the hands regarded him with surprise, then resentment. The Indigo's aura moiled like vapor, a poisonous-looking hue that illuminated his shadow shape for a moment. A light-colored robe swathed his frame, ceremonial by the looks of it, but tattered and frayed. Something that looked like dried blood stained the sleeves.

As if sensing his scrutiny, the Indigo's aura drew back, and his body returned to the vague humanoid lump. Only his eyes stayed visible, eyes of a cornered predator, fierce and unyielding. Their staring contest lasted so long he was glad he didn't have to blink in dreams. Saddler laughed softly in the darkness below. A rasp of air between teeth, and the Indigo gave a bowing nod, exaggerated and mocking, before he lifted his hands. _Fool._ _You will regret knowing, but go, read, see if the past frees you from his tyranny._

The book's weight almost toppled him to the floor, but he clutched the massive thing to his chest, and willed his mind back to his front yard. All this yo-yoing was making him dizzy. Unlike the other books that had disappeared after he read them, or had shelved themselves back in place, the stone one stayed in his hands. Solid. Tangible.

Back on the swing as if he had never left, Saddler sipped the rest of his father's lemonade. Remembering that trail of red, Leon stiffened, watching the liquid in the glass. Yellow again, no trace of red. Saddler took his time, his neck arching as he downed the last of the contents. He set the glass on the table, a pleased grin breaking the mask of age, a flush rising in his cheeks. He didn't know how the bastard could be so cheery after threatening to "punish" him, after gutting Ashley, after infecting him with this schizophrenic parasite. Forget Sybil. All these Indigo personalities inside him could run a small country.

He dropped the book on the grass, the loud thud shutting up the imaginary crickets. "Smirk all you want. I'm only reading this damn thing to get rid of the jerk pitching tents in my brain, and to get rid of you, preferably in the most messiest way I can."

"Then what are you waiting for?" Saddler said. He folded his hands in his lap, and leaned forward like a patron expecting some wondrous presentation. "Open it."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the kudos and comments. I didn't expect any here (since this is an old story), but I love each one. It takes time to comment, and I appreciate the feedback.


	8. Bind My Soul With Thorns

Turning points in life. Little epiphanies. His father used to say that most people spent their life asleep. Once in a while, something would wake them up, their consciousness stirred by events or reflection. They'd open their eyes, blink at the world, learn something new. From then on, these moments would define their dreams – but not all dreams would be pleasant.

Whenever his eyes close, he'll remember what day, what place, what moment he should have denied his obsessive need for the truth.

Damn that book. He shouldn't have opened it.

Nothing happened at first. Blank pages stared at him. A musty smell tickled his nose. He looked up in question, but Saddler had disappeared. The stars winked out. His yard darkened. The ground swayed beneath his feet.

The book seemed glued to his fingers, heavier than it had been before. He sank to his knees, lightheaded, images spinning before his eyes. Voices murmured in his ears, in his head. One voice, silky and low drew him near, his consciousness no longer anchored to his dream self.

He went spinning into another time and place, lured by this speaker, this woman who meant everything to him – no, she meant everything to the _First_. The First was not him. He fought to keep himself separate from the original Indigo, resisted the urge to be swept away in the rising tide of sensations.

The Indigo's feelings plowed through him; the unfamiliar sights and sounds rang through his ears. Like a child awakening in the middle of a noisy amusement park, he didn't know where to look, or what to look at.

One thing was certain. Surprising. Impossible.

_They're just like us, like humans. How is that –_

"Jase, look. They defile our Saints," she said. He stared at her and in the rush of emotion, the battle to keep his distance was lost. Leon and the First became one mind. Medeya. His mate. His world. On the winding street of white stone, in a city he knew as Sikyon, she shook against him – not in fear, but in rage. "They mock us. They mock the Creator. They think He does not see, does not hear. Fools. Spurn His love, know His fury."

He yearned to caress those lips, lush flesh pressed in a thin line. He wanted to find a secluded niche to calm her with his body. But neither was possible. Across the road, and in celebration of their victory over their enemies, the Indigo, the Sovereign were tearing the Sacred Oracles down, block by block, smashing million-year old stone that had been carved with meticulous care and devotion.

"Heretics." She spat on the ground and made the ancient sign of vengeance against her forehead. "They spit in His face. They are all damned."

He moved to comfort her, reign her in. If she lost her temper now, she would be killed. She shrugged him off, her ivory robes billowing, the trim winking gold. The Sovereign paused to stare at her. She bared her teeth and snarled like an animal.

They laughed.

A page turned, Leon felt the weight of the paper in his hand. Where was he? Was his consciousness there in his yard, holding the book, turning the pages? A dream within a dream?

He tumbled forward in the dark, unsure of who he was, who he should be. Then he heard her again. His salvation. He clung to her voice. A different scene this time, darker, a temple, stone archways, clear water gurgling from a dozen square cisterns.

"Hesitation is weak faith. The Creator demands your obedience."

How earnest she looked, her green eyes wide, her chest heaving with anticipation. Her red ringlets were wet from the fall she had taken during the fight with one of the Sovereign water sentries. No matter how beautiful her features, he always focused on her lips, their shape, their fullness. Red berries kissed by frost.

Her hands clasped his wrist, pale fingers burning. "Don't let all those hours of toil be for nothing. Don't let your brilliance be lost upon fear. You are the divine hand of the Creator. His will is yours. He gave you the knowledge for this weapon. Use it. Pour His judgment into our water. Like when the angel Empathy poured his tears into the river, forcing us to drink –

"It's not the same," he whispered the words, his eyes on the Sovereign female bleeding at his feet. He didn't know her name. She had tried to stop them, but she was just a child. Youngest of her house, no doubt stationed here as punishment for losing a duel. Their clans were so different. The Sovereign, warriors at birth. The Indigo, artists and scribes.

And one scientist with a knack for alchemy. He held ten years worth of work in his hand.

Water rushed below the glass catwalk. Beneath his feet, the lifeblood of their city flowed.

The Sovereign girl moaned, clawed weakly at the floor. She stared at the vial, the tiny blue bottle that would end everything. The girl shook her head, pleaded with her eyes.

Medeya pressed his hand against her breast. Warm, her heart like a bird struggling free. "If you love our people, you will do this. Let the Creator decide who is worthy."

He tipped his hand.

The Sovereign girl began crying.

A roaring sound, Leon felt the years passing in chaos. Pages in his hands went from white to blood-red. Jase's thoughts flooded him, a turbulent wave of regret and bitterness.

No words could express the suffering, a world torn asunder by his hand. No words could express the guilt that he battled with daily. He forced himself to watch as children tore their flesh away, revealing what Medeya called their "rotted souls". Children. Bleeding. Dying. How could that be the Creator's plan? Seduced by a temptress with green eyes, red hair. Had he been led astray?

"Jase," she said as he thrust into her, the world in flames outside their window. Riots again. The unfaithful were trying to escape their confinement. Indigo had gone from prisoners to wardens, self-proclaimed judges of the heretics. No one would break their statues now.

"Look at me, Jase."

He did. She gazed at him with eyes no longer green. It frightened him how the hunger never ended. Even as they sated themselves here, once finished, they would begin again. And again. And again.

Never satisfied. She, worst of all.

"The Indigo hate you," he said, gasping when she seized his waist with her thighs. "They hate what they have become." That was a lie. They had made her a saint. Him as well. Their statues embraced in the center of the temple garden.

She smiled, nipped at his throat, sucked on his pulse. His breathing hitched. "It is the Creator's will," she said. "We have passed His test. The Sovereign have failed."

"Our brothers and sisters hate feeding on them. On those shriveled creatures. Their light hurts our eyes."

"It is the new way. They serve us now."

"I didn't intend this, Medeya. I just wanted the war to stop."

She pulled him down, suffocating him with her breath, her breasts. He climaxed, tears in his eyes.

"And it has," she said.

But it never stopped. The Sovereign refused to surrender to Indigo rule. Even when they became wizened and twisted, shadows of what they once had been – still they fought. He admired that.

Warriors from birth. Warriors until the end.

Medeya became disgruntled, her joy of victory dimmed by Sovereign defiance. She demanded that he study them, reveal what had caused their mutation, and what had spared the Indigo the Sovereign's deformities.

He spent months grappling with theories before he came to a conclusion. Genetics. The Indigo had encouraged their people to breed with other houses, even taking one or two exiled Sovereign under their wing. But thousands of years of inbreeding among the Sovereign clan had caused several weak links in their DNA. A shallow pool compared to a vast genetic ocean.

This news pleased Medeya. Her joy returned, even as his dwindled. She announced his findings, made certain the Sovereign heard.

Another riot occurred.

Twenty Indigo perished, over a hundred unfaithful were purged.

The Sovereign were imprisoned in the catacombs.

Years drifted by. They blurred together, ink running under his fingertips. Leon struggled to pull himself away from Jase, but Jase refused to let go. Memories came swift and hot. Years of sex and feeding, feeding and sex. Medeya devoured him, drained him dry of his knowledge and strength. Hunger and guilt were his masters. No prayers could contain his misery, no meditation could ease it.

He became obsessed with them. While Medeya played queen, and the other Indigo busied themselves elsewhere, he visited the catacombs to watch the Sovereign swim. His handiwork. His creation. They were elegant in water, their tendrils in constant motion, their eyes always fixed above, bright in their hatred. He met their gaze, but could not hold it long. Every time he tried, he felt the vial, its feather weight like a brand against his palm.

He contemplated throwing himself into the pool many times.

The courage always failed him. The Sovereign would gather below, drink his tears. He sobbed for forgiveness. They refused to answer. Medeya would come, lead him away like a child. Make love to him, feed him, worship him.

He longed for peace.

Halfway through the book now, though Leon couldn't see the pages. He felt them pass through his fingers, a ghostly sensation. He wanted to stop turning them, but nothing he did ended the memories pouring in.

Helpless, he slipped again into Jase's mind.

"Consider this a blessing, my love. Our moment to rejoice." In bed again, though they were both spent. For now. Coupling never grew dull; they even used it to test each other. Push each other. It had become a game to see who surrendered first.

It was never Medeya.

"Where did they come from?" he said. Aliens from another world, a welcome ripple across their stagnant pond.

"From the Creator's arms. He provides once again. The Sovereign are now obsolete."

Fear shot through his body, arousing him. Ironic. He flipped her over, dominating her. These chances rarely came. "We cannot feed on them. They have offered friendship, technology."

"They are fair. I'm tired of draining those obscene creatures. They sicken me."

"They are our creation."

She laughed, a tinkling sound he had started to despise. Her hips thrust higher, her buttocks squeezing. "They are yours. Execute the remaining Sovereign when the alien envoy arrives. Once we have their ships under our control, we will take their homeworld."

He closed his eyes, hating her, hating himself. Hesitation was weak faith. "Yes, Medeya."

But something happened after the aliens arrived. Disaster. The unthinkable.

Divine in her fury, she paced, her face pinched tight, her small fists curled and shaking. "Your negligence has damned us all. Fool. What were you thinking?"

"I just wanted her to see. Someone should know they existed – to know they were beautiful once. I didn't think she would try to touch one."

"How did the Sovereign do it? What did you observe?"

He looked away, remembering the alien girl's screams when the tentacles entered her. "The Sovereign had hollowed her out, crawled inside. It wore her body as a shell."

"And what of these...deformities?" Her eyes searched his. "This remolding of the flesh. How is it possible?"

"I don't know."

She moved to strike him. He flinched. Her hand went to his chin instead, caressing his jaw. "You made this plague. You designed its purpose. The Sovereign took new bodies. Can we do the same? Take another form?"

"I-I'm not certain. Why would –"

"Because they defy the Creator by existing! Two of the alien ships are missing, and they have taken five of us prisoner. I shudder to think what the unfaithful are doing to our brothers, what torture they must be enduring. The Sovereign are whole again. Powerful. Make us stronger."

"You're afraid of them."

"They are vile, worthless creatures that deserve to die. Their rightful place is swimming in the ooze beneath our feet. You know who they want. Who they will return for when they have amassed an army. You, my love. And I." She purred the words, delighting in how they affected him. Her toxic light invaded his own, nipping teeth, pinching fingers. The warmth drained from his face. He regretted not jumping when he had the chance.

He looked toward the corner of the throne room, where the alien leader crouched, limbs bound, his eyes wide with terror. Poor bastards. The moment they saw the Indigo, the aliens had been seduced by their beauty, their grace. They should have fled. "I'll need to experiment. See if we are compatible. And if we are – "

The plague had affected them all, but the Sovereign had been forced to wear their souls on the outside, the ugliness, the corruption. The Indigo had stayed beautiful, but the never ending hunger had twisted them in the inside, making them just as corrupt, tainted.

They were the same.

And if they were the same. That meant they could take new flesh. Shred the old skin and their old lives. Start over again.

Hope pushed aside the guilt. Begin anew. It seemed a fantasy. Excitement sparked inside for the first time in ages. "Forgive my hesitation, Medeya. You are right. The Creator guides us toward a new path. To doubt you is to doubt the Creator's plan. Bring the other aliens and I will begin my tests."

She kissed him. He savored it. Their old bodies pressed together for the last time.

They would have new flesh by morning.

Leon paused, his mind floating in Jase's mental sea. So that's how they began jumping bodies, jumping species. In the centuries that followed, he saw entire civilizations crumble, entire worlds fall. And it was all for revenge. To prove superiority. When the Sovereign had exhausted every resource, they moved on. The Indigo followed, but always one step behind.

With each new host, came new powers. New challenges. But something had begun to go wrong. Another weakness began whittling away at the Indigo resolve.

The Indigo were going insane.

"How can the Sovereign take new bodies and bear no consequence?" Medeya circled a newly joined Indigo, his face slack, ugly red eyes blank and staring. It was happening more and more. The newborns refused to wake. Her current form, a tanned male with short black hair, frowned in disgust. The newborn's fate, like the others, had been already decided. "Look at his light. It's putrid, revolting. I can't even bear the sight of it."

He wore a female, slim, fair-haired. The host's name had been Airi. She hovered at the edge of his consciousness, a riled beast waiting for her chance to pounce, to take back her body. He had given up taming her after the third day of joining. The other souls inside him gathered behind her, watching.

He rubbed his temples and tried to explain, "The Sovereign purge the soul along with the mind when they take a body. Or at the very least, subvert the soul. Cage it. We...cannot. With each new body, we must absorb the soul and mind into our own. We must bear their memories, all their sorrow and anger."

"It is a simple trick to silence them. A child can do it."

"But even the strongest tree will topple if it has too many nests."

Medeya unsheathed one, graceful wing. The Indigo's head rolled to the floor. No emotion except disappointment. "I don't have time for your riddles."

"Minds, Medeya. Too many minds." He wanted to shake her, make her see. Stubborn bitch. "I know you still hear the voices. You still see the hosts. You can shove them elsewhere, but they are still there."

"This is unacceptable. More and more of the newborns are becoming these useless creatures. I'm losing my brothers, my allies. Fix it."

 _Kill her. I'll do it for you if you want,_ said Airi. She perched on her ledge, eager to wrap her hands around Medeya's neck. His own hands shook with the thought. It would be easy to let Airi take control, to slip away and sleep for a while. Dream his own dreams instead of theirs. "This cannot be fixed with a spoken word. I cannot magick it away with a spell, or even my alchemy. This is deeper. Complex."

"The Sovereign are winning. They are using us for their perverse desires. Hunting _us_ now. Enslaving us. We must turn the tide before they can claim another victory."

 _Don't you tire of her wailing?_ Airi said. _She's the one who started it all. Her hate, her selfish ambitions. She only wanted you for the alchemy. She used you, and she keeps using you. Stop being a coward. End her, and end this war._

It sounded too easy. He studied Medeya, found himself wondering the best way to sever her spine. The wings were attached there, sharp feathers that would cut him to pieces.

_Yours are faster. One strike. That's all it would take._

"Jase, are you in control?" Medeya narrowed her gaze at him, purple eyes in a handsome, arrogant face. It was wrong. She should be female. They were perverting the Creator's design. Every soul they took, every civilization they exploited.

_We should be free, Jase. You imprisoned us. Now we can't even die._

"I'm sorry." His throat caught, his hunger choking him. Three days had passed since he last fed. Their current meal supply was immune to Indigo seduction. They always begged. Cried.

"Jase, concentrate. Tell them to cease. I need you now. We will work through this, find a way –"

_Killing her would be the best way. Freedom, Jase. Think of it._

"It would be wonderful." His control faltered. The souls rushed him, tugged him back with cold hands. He took a breath, let himself fall. He had been wanting to sleep for such a long time.

Airi seized her chance.

When he awoke, metal bars surrounded him. He was naked, the female body he wore covered in bruises and scratches. His wings poked from his back in bloody stumps, cauterized, smeared with something that smelled like fruit and earth. A healing retardant. Medeya peered at him through the bars. Compassion looked strange on that face. The tears streaming down those lean cheeks, even stranger.

"I will remove the oil from your wings when you are sane again. Your host tried to kill me, Jase. You allowed her to take over. I have talked with the Indigo priests. They tell me you haven't eaten in days. Neglecting yourself is inexcusable. Must I feed you by hand? Sometimes I wonder how the Creator chose us as mates. You are so weak."

"Because you have taken all my strength, you filthy leech. You have glutted yourself upon me. And I deserved it. Consequences. There are always consequences. We are monsters, worse than the Sovereign. Look at what we have done. The chaos we have created. The Creator made every species in his image, just as He made us. We are destroying His people. What is happening to us is punishment. We should be purged, not the Sovereign."

"Hush, you are hysterical. I will bring food soon. You must eat, heal."

"Let me starve. Let me die."

"Never."

Days wove into one another like Sovereign swimming, tendrils always in motion. He did not reflect upon his sins. He did not pray or meditate. Medeya visited every day. Sometimes twice. She fed him. Begged him. Ranted at him. He let Airi have control more and more. He slept while she came forward. Blissful darkness. Airi had plenty to say to Medeya.

Medeya stopped coming.

He thought nothing of it. Not even when Airi prodded him from his slumber. She was hungry. It had been days since anyone had come. Alarmed, he came forward and scanned his cell. No sign of sentries. No sign of anyone. The corpse of Airi's last meal lay nearby. The smell made his eyes water.

 _I hear footsteps, Jase,_ said Airi. _But I don't think it's Medeya._

He heard them also. Heavy. Slow. No Indigo sounded like that. His heart leaped in his chest. Airi tensed.

"Ah, there you are." A humanoid male lumbered around the corner, dressed in voluminous black robes. Eerie grace for one so large. Airi retreated further inside. He stared in shock. The creature pulled down his hood. White-ringed eyes appraised him, a triumphant smile splitting the once handsome face in two. Another eye winked where his lips parted, yellow and veined.

Sovereign.

"You are not one of the empty ones. Good. Imagine how disappointed we would have been. Jase the Destroyer, a drooling golem." Another joined the first, cloaked in red. Smaller, but no less intimidating. Their light burned the walls. Elders. Both of them. The most powerful of Sovereign.

"Are you certain it is he?" said the red Sovereign.

"Yes, hiding within a female. Endearing isn't it?"

"Poor thing. The demon whore locked you away, didn't she? Were you a naughty boy, _Jase_?" The red Sovereign hissed his name, lips curling. "Don't worry. We shall save you, redeem you. Give you every opportunity for penance."

Leon blinked. His breath stopped. The floor felt cold. Really cold. The stink of the decaying corpse brought bile to his throat. He blinked again. The two Sovereign stayed, glowering at him.

Oh... _fuck._

This wasn't happening, No. He was in his yard. With the book. Observation only. Shit. Where was that Airi chick? Where did Jase go?

_You fucking asshole. Where the hell are you? Get back here!_

_No. I warned you against prying. You would not heed me. Now you will endure their punishment as I made Airi endure it. And all others after her. The darkness is my sanctuary. I will slumber now._

_You COWARD._

_Yes. You have realized this too late. I hope my memories will aid you, prepare you for the horrors to come. The bond is an unholy thing, but it will keep your mind from fraying. May the Creator grant you peace one day. Peace to us all._

_Don't leave me here! Not with him!_

"Child, he is gone." In the place of the red Sovereign, Saddler wrapped his hands around the bars. One yank and they snapped free. Leon scuttled into the corner, his speed encumbered by the injured stumps on his back. This was bullshit. Not fair. His wings shouldn't be damaged. What the hell would he defend himself with?

The black Sovereign bowed to Saddler. "He is beautiful, but I do not envy you. Taming him will be a challenge."

"Indeed. Leave us."

The Sovereign made another bow and pulled the hood back over his head. When his footsteps faded, Saddler entered the cell.

"This is messed up. Crazy. Fucking fucked up." He cringed in the corner, his stumps aching from pressing against the stone wall. He wasn't that Airi girl anymore, but he didn't have clothes either. That figured.

Something slithered against his leg. Saddler's sneaky tentacles wanted to play. He yelped, dodging to the side, then to the other. Nowhere to run in the tiny room. Covered in ichor, the tendrils ensnared him, limbs and neck. He found himself on the floor, gasping for air. The ceiling spun, poison surging through his body, setting his nerves aflame. "Kill me, damn you. I'd rather die than be your slave. Just kill me and be done with it."

"Where is the American hero who swaggered into my village?" Saddler growled into his face. The tentacles curled tighter. He couldn't breathe. "Where is the proud boy who massacred my people? My best men? My family. You butchered them, smiling. And you have the audacity to _command_ me? Kill you? No. You _obey_ me. You _endure_ me. In bonding, I keep the other hosts from consuming you. Words of gratitude should be spilling from your lips."

Saddler's face faded, then sprang back when the tentacle around his neck loosened. He didn't move. If he moved he would start rubbing like a cat against Saddler's body. The ichor pulsed inside, his blood thick and hot like syrup. Saddler's face rippled. Then it came apart. His robes darkened with fluid. The smell of blood filled his lungs. He gagged and squeezed his eyes shut. The monster mounted him, cooed in his ear. He turned away. Unfaithful. Rotting souls. Plaga. So many names.

_But so elegant when they swim._

He bucked in a last attempt for freedom. That earned him a soft chuckle and a nuzzle against his neck. The hooks came next. Invisible, wickedly curved. The memory of the sea returned, the first attempt Saddler made to bond. This time, the hooks pierced his spine, plunging deep. He cried out, arched his back.

"Yes, yield. My soul to yours. Accept my mind and will as your own."

The hooks burrowed inside him, deeper, deeper still. His body jerked, twitched in Saddler's hold. The pain robbed him of his voice. His sanity felt compressed, twisted. Any moment it would fly apart in a spray of blood and bone. Something filled him then, thrust against a tiny place inside that brought pleasure. Heat and friction. Pure rapture. His spine and hips snapped up. His eyes rolled. His toes curled. A cry of surrender burst from his mouth. Saddler sighed, then groaned, his pace quickening. The tentacles around Leon's limbs clenched.

The hooks hit his core, locked in place. Fused him to the monster.

In a rush of pain and ecstasy, the war between Indigo and Sovereign ended.

A sob caught in his throat. He had lost. Saddler had won.

His face whole again, and body reverting into human form, Saddler whispered into his ear. "And what a sweet victory it was. Finally, you are mine."

* * *

The more I reread this, the weirder it gets. 


End file.
